Quotes from Maya Angelou

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

I may never be known as a philanthropist, but I certainly am a lover of mankind, and I will give freely of my resources. I am happy to describe myself as charitable.

It's one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive. Forgive everybody.

Human beings are like some plants. If we pause a few seconds in our journey, we begin setting down roots, tendrils that entangle other people as we ourselves are entangled.

Knowing Momma, I knew that I never knew Momma.

I read more than ever, and wished my soul that I had been born a boy. Horatio Alger was the greatest writer in the world. His heroes were always good, always won, and were always boys. I could have developed the first two virtues, but becoming a boy was sure to be difficult, if not impossible.

She was stimulating instead of intimidating.

Why should I be afraid of you?' He was still laughing. He said 'Maybe you think I'll think you are a missionary and I'll eat you.' I said 'I don't think that anyway. If more Africans had eaten more missionaries, the continent would be in better shape.

You may not be able to control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them

The unquestioning acceptance by my peers had dislodged the familiar insecurity.

I have waited toes curled, hat rolled heart and genitals in hand on the back porches of forever in the kitchens and fields of rejections on the cold marble steps of America's White Out-House in the drop seats of buses and the open flies of war

We had expected three cots in our room, but found one large lumpy bed, a very worn carpet and a single overhead light. "You mean this is what these people got out of their revolution?" Martha daintily picked her way around the room. "Someone should tell them that they're about due for another." She wrinkled her pretty face in distaste. Ethel