Quotes / Thinkers / Maya Angelou
Thinker · 19 quotes
19 sourced quotes by Maya Angelou on courage, resilience & perseverance, education & knowledge, emotions & self-control, ethics & morality, with a use case for each in GS4, Essay and interviews.
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The needs of a society determine its ethics.
You don't have to think about doing the right thing. If you're for the right thing, then you do it without thinking.
If we are bold, love strikes away the chains of fear from our souls.
Develop enough courage so that you can stand up for yourself and then stand up for somebody else.
Without courage we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.
When you learn, teach, when you get, give.
All information belongs to everybody all the time. It should be available. It should be accessible to the child, to the woman, to the man, to the old person, to the semiliterate, to the presidents of universities, to everyone. It should be open.
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.
You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have. (1982; quoted in the Introduction by Jeffrey M. Elliot)
Life is going to give you just what you put in it. Put your whole heart in everything you do, and pray, then you can wait.
We may encounter many defeats, but we must not be defeated.
You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.
You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I'll rise.
My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.
You did in your twenties what you knew how to do, and when you knew better you did better. And you should not be judged for the person that you were, but for the person that you're trying to be and the woman that you are now.
Self-pity in its early stages is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable.
I can become quite angry and burning in anger, but I have never been bitter. Bitterness is a corrosive, terrible acid. It just eats you and makes you sick. (1977)
When people show you who they are, believe them, the first time. Not the 29th time!
There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.