1,440 Quotes by maya angelou

Sugar cane reach up to GodAnd every baby cryingShame the blanket of my nightAnd all my days are dying

Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in the world, but has not solved one yet.

Every person under the sound of my voice is a soldier. You are either fighting for your freedom or betraying the fight for freedom or enlisted in the army to deny somebody else freedom.

You’ve been a hard worker—white, black, Asian, and Latino women ship out of the San Francisco port because of you. You have been a shipfitter, a nurse, a real estate broker, and a barber. Many men and—if my memory serves me right—a few women risked their lives to love you. You were a terrible mother of small children, but there has never been anyone greater than you as a mother of a young adult.

remember this: When you cross my doorstep, you have already been raised. With what you have learned...you know the difference between right and wrong. Do right. Don't anybody raise you from the way you have been raised. Know you will have to make adaptations, in love, in relationships, in friends, in society, in work, but don't let anybody change your mind.

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

Upon reflection, I marvel that no one saw through me enough to bundle me off to the nearest mental institution. The fact that it didn't happen depended less on my being a good actress than the fact that I was surrounded, as I had been all my life, by strangers.

She said, 'No, you learned that you have power - power and determination. I love you and I am proud of you. With those two things, you can go anywhere and everywhere.

When access to a better life has been denied often enough, and successfully enough, one can use the rejection as an excuse to cease all efforts [...] And if I do nothing, I have every right to my idleness, for, after all, haven't I tried?