Maya Angelou Quotes

“Let gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer. And let faith be the bridge you build to overcome evil and welcome good.”
― Maya Angelou, Celebrations: Rituals of Peace and Prayer

“When Great Trees Fall

When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.

When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.

When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.

Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance,
fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance
of dark, cold
caves.

And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.”
― Maya Angelou

“While one may encounter many defeats, one must not be defeated.”
― Maya Angelou

“The Black female is assaulted in her tender years by all those common forces of nature at the same time that she is caught in the tripartite crossfire of masculine prejudice, white illogical hate and Black lack of power.

The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerence. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“People whose history and future were threatened each day by extinction considered that it was only by divine intervention that they were able to live at all. I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God's will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at a commensurate speed.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“It was awful to be Negro and have no control over my life. It was brutal to be young and already trained to sit quietly and listen to charges brought against my color with no chance of defense. We should all be dead. I thought I should like to see us all dead, one on top of the other. A pyramid of flesh with the whitefolks on the bottom, as the broad base, then the Indians with their silly tomahawks and teepees and wigwams and treaties, the Negroes with their mops and recipes and cotton sacks and spirituals sticking out of their mouths. The Dutch children should all stumble in their wooden shoes and break their necks. The French should choke to death on the Louisiana Purchase (1803) while silkworms ate all the Chinese with their stupid pigtails. As a species, we were an abomination. All of us.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“The needs of a society determine its ethics, and in the Black American ghettos the hero is that man who is offered only the crumbs from his country's table but by ingenuity and courage is able to take for himself a Lucullan feast. Hence the janitor who lives in one room but sports a robin's-egg-blue Cadillac is not laughed at but admired, and the domestic who buys forty-dollar shoes is not criticized but is appreciated. We know that they have put to use their full mental and physical powers. Each single gain feeds into the gains of the body collective.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future, and renders the present inaccessible.”
― Maya Angelou

“Until recently each generation found it more expedient to plead guilty to the charge of being young and ignorant, easier to take the punishment meted out by the older generation (which had itself confessed to the same crime short years before). The command to grow up at once was more bearable than the faceless horror of wavering purpose, which was youth.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“You are the sum total of everything you’ve ever seen, heard, eaten, smelled, been told, forgot - it’s all there. Everything influences each of us, and because of that I try to make sure that my experiences are positive.”
― Maya Angelou

“Take a day to heal from the lies you’ve told yourself and the ones that have been told to you.”
― Maya Angelou

“Soft you day, be velvet soft,
My true love approaches,
Look you bright, you dusty sun,
Array your golden coaches.

Soft you wind, be soft as silk
My true love is speaking.
Hold you birds, your silver throats,
His golden voice I'm seeking.

Come you death, in haste, do come
My shroud of black be weaving,
Quiet my heart, be deathly quiet,
My true love is leaving.”
― Maya Angelou, The Complete Collected Poems

“Don't kneel please. Sometimes people put people on pedestals so they can see them more clearly and knock them off more easily”
― Maya Angelou, Mom & Me & Mom

“Late October

Carefully
the leaves of autumn
sprinkle down the tinny
sound of little dyings
and skies sated
of ruddy sunsets
of roseate dawns
roil ceaselessly in
cobweb greys and turn
to black
for comfort.

Only lovers
see the fall
a signal end to endings
a gruffish gesture alerting
those who will not be alarmed
that we begin to stop
in order to begin
again.”
― Maya Angelou, The Poetry of Maya Angelou

“Maya Angelou entered our lives at Virago in 1984, when we first published I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. "Entered our lives" is too tame. She danced, sang, and laughed her way straight into our hearts. She brought us a best-seller, but more than that, she brought us a reminder that the human need for dignity and recognition is a gift easily given to one another, but also frighteningly easy to withhold.”
― Lennie Goodings

“Frequently, I have been asked how I got to be this way. How did I, born black in a white country, poor in a society where wealth is adored and sought after at all costs, female in an environment where only large ships and some engines are described favourably by using the female pronoun-how did I get to be Maya Angelou?”
― Maya Angelou, Mom & Me & Mom

“I don't trust people who don't love themselves and tell me, 'I love you.' ..." - Maya Angelou”
― Maya Angelou

“In a world where ‘likes’ and ‘followers’ define worth, we have become a society of self-promotion and self-indulgence, where the true value of human connection and genuine experience is lost to the endless pursuit of more.”
― Jop Helm

“They start out with a few compliments, which I receive readily. Yes, I’ve whipped the digital archive into shape. Yes, I delivered on the K–5 Maya Angelou and Frida Kahlo biographies, wherein the sexual assault and bus accident were omitted per a Provo parents group who weren’t ready for their kids to see the blood women wade through to create art.”
― Raven Leilani, Luster

“You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may tread me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.”
― Maya Angelou, And Still I Rise

“In the end, it is not the grand gestures of love that sustain a relationship, but the daily acts of kindness and devotion.”
― Shawpelle Mellowness & Sleepy Hero

“Dialogues with such inspiring idols as Sylvia Plath, Maya Angelou, E E Cummings, Rabindranath Tagore, Lakshmi Prasad Devkota, Ernest Hemingway in one's imagination is a way to keep the creative fire burning within the artist's soul.”
― Avijeet Das

“When the powerful control the narrative, they hold the reins of perception. In the era of corporate western media, the masses must question what they’re being fed, lest they become unwitting pawns in the game of power.”
― Jop Helm

“Our existence is a philosophical conundrum in the era of social media - do we truly exist if we aren’t validated by likes and followers?”
― Jop Helm

“Black women - the world knows that we are strong because our strength is legendary. We are Harriet Tubman, Michelle Obama, and Rosa Parks. We are Oprah Winfrey, Nanny, and Mae Jameson. We are Shirley Chisholm, Portia Simpson and Maya Angelou. We have birthed a nation, rescued slaves, built empires, traveled to space and written our place in history. Survival is not enough; we were built to rise.”
― Janet Autherine, The Heart and Soul of Black Women: Poems of Love, Struggle and Resilience

“Love is a symphony of the heart, a melody that echoes through the ages, and a song that we all long to sing.”
― Sleepy Hero

“Love is the greatest adventure of all, a journey that takes us to the highest peaks and the deepest valleys, but ultimately leads us to a place of profound happiness and fulfillment.”
― Sleepy Hero, Life is Meaningless and That's Okay: Embracing Your Existential Freedom

“When they push your buttons and then blame you for pushing back, that's not just disrespect, it's pure manipulation.”
― Jop Helm, COVERT CONTROL: Unveiling the Dark Art of Social Manipulation

“When you learn, teach.
When you get, give.”
― Oprah Winfrey, Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier

“Maya Angelou spoke of why the caged bird sings and of the courage it takes for literature to crush racism and face trauma. Angelou said the caged bird sings when his wing is bruised and he beats his bars to be free, here’s hoping that every cage be broken through and every bruised wing be healed by the joy of freedom so that it could soar. There are no gardens in prison for the poet to see yet his words make the cage bloom.”
― Aysha Taryam