Maya Angelou

“You will face many defeats in life, but never let yourself be defeated.”

“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

“We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders.”

“Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.”

“It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.”

“One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.”

“While I know myself as a creation of God, I am also obligated to realize and remember that everyone else and everything else are also God's creation.”

“Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.”

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

“My life has been one great big joke, a dance that's walked a song that's spoke, I laugh so hard I almost choke when I think about myself.”

“I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands you need to be able to throw something back.”

“At fifteen life had taught me undeniably that surrender, in its place, was as honorable as resistance, especially if one had no choice.”

“Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: 'I'm with you kid. Let's go.'”

“If you have only one smile in you give it to the people you love.”

“Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.”

“As far as I knew white women were never lonely, except in books. White men adored them, Black men desired them and Black women worked for them.”

“While the rest of the world has been improving technology, Ghana has been improving the quality of man's humanity to man.”

“Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.”

“There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.”

“I will look after you and I will look after anybody you say needs to be looked after, any way you say. I am here. I brought my whole self to you. I am your mother.”

Mom & Me & Mom

“The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerance. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors, and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.”

“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.”