Maya Angelou

For Africa to me… is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place.

I believe we are still so innocent. The species are still so innocent that a person who is apt to be murdered believes that the murderer, just before he puts the final wrench on his throat, will have enough compassion to give him one sweet cup of water.

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

If we lose love and self respect for each other, this is how we finally die.

If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude. Don’t complain.

A woman who is convinced that she deserves to accept only the best challenges herself to give the best. Then she is living phenomenally.

The sum of wisdom is that time is never lost that is devoted to work.

Men have become the tools of their tools.

To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning.

I’m not a teacher: only a fellow-traveler of whom you asked the way. I pointed ahead – ahead of myself as well as you.

This is a fault common to all singers, that among their friends they will never sing when they are asked; unasked, they will never desist.

Our most important task is to transform our consciousness so that violence is no longer an option for us in our personal lives, that understanding that a world of peace is possible only if we relate to each other as peaceful beings, one individual at a time.

One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing.

The only way for a woman to provide for herself decently is for her to be good to some man that can afford to be good to her.

If a man knew anything, he would sit in a corner and be modest; but he is such an ignorant peacock, that he goes bustling up and down, and hits on extraordinary discoveries.

My own experience and development deepen everyday my conviction that our moral progress may be measured by the degree in which we sympathize with individual suffering and individual joy.

As you get older, you realize that no one has all the answers. It turns out that life is an exercise in living with the certainty of uncertainty. – Jason Kilar

For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.

I only desire sincere relations with the worthiest of my acquaintance, that they may give me an opportunity once in a year to speak the truth.

Youth, which is forgiven everything, forgives itself nothing: age, which forgives itself everything, is forgiven nothing.

The rich man is always sold to the institution which makes him rich. Absolutely speaking, the more money, the less virtue.