Maya Angelou

My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors.

If you are always trying to be normal you will never know how amazing you can be.

A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.

Some critics will write ‘Maya Angelou is a natural writer’ – which is right after being a natural heart surgeon.

My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return.

I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.

Without a rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar.

Well I am certainly wiser than this man. It is only too likely that neither of us has any knowledge to boast of; but he thinks that he knows something which he does not know, whereas I am quite conscious of my ignorance. At any rate it seems that I am wiser than he is to this small extent, that I do not think that I know what I do not know.

The secret of being a bore… is to tell everything.

We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.

I can live for two months on a good compliment.

In the stillness of the mind I saw myself as I am – unbound.

Natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience.

A man is related to all nature.

To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically.

The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.

It’s powerful to have strong men but what does that strength mean?

Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it.

Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

For many years I was a self-appointed inspector of snowstorms and rainstorms and did my duty faithfully, though I never received payment for it.

The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading in order to write. A man will turn over half a library to make a book.