All great achievements require time.
- Maya Angelou Quote

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.
- Maya Angelou Quote

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.
- Maya Angelou Quote

Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.
- Maya Angelou Quote

Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.
- Maya Angelou Quote

Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can't practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.
- Maya Angelou Quote

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.
- Maya Angelou Quote

How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!
- Maya Angelou Quote

I believe we are still so innocent. The species are still so innocent that a person who is apt to be murdered believes that the murderer, just before he puts the final wrench on his throat, will have enough compassion to give him one sweet cup of water.
- Maya Angelou Quote

I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.
- Maya Angelou Quote

I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life's a bitch. You've got to go out and kick ass.
- Maya Angelou Quote

I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
- Maya Angelou Quote

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.
- Maya Angelou Quote

If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities.
- Maya Angelou Quote

If we lose love and self respect for each other, this is how we finally die.
- Maya Angelou Quote

If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude. Don't complain.
- Maya Angelou Quote

If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded.
- Maya Angelou Quote

If you have only one smile in you, give it to the people you love. Don't be surly at home, then go out in the street and start grinning 'Good morning' at total strangers.
- Maya Angelou Quote

It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.
- Maya Angelou Quote

Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.
- Maya Angelou Quote

Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at it destination full of hope.
- Maya Angelou Quote

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.
- Maya Angelou Quote

My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return.
- Maya Angelou Quote

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

Nature has no mercy at all. Nature says, I'm going to snow. If you have on a bikini and no snowshoes, that's tough. I am going to snow anyway.
- Maya Angelou Quote

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.
- Maya Angelou Quote

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.
- Maya Angelou Quote

Self-pity in its early stages is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable.
- Maya Angelou Quote

Some critics will write 'Maya Angelou is a natural writer' - which is right after being a natural heart surgeon.
- Maya Angelou Quote

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.
- Maya Angelou Quote

The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.
- Maya Angelou Quote

The sadness of the women's movement is that they don't allow the necessity of love. See, I don't personally trust any revolution where love is not allowed.
- Maya Angelou Quote

There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.
- Maya Angelou Quote

There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.
- Maya Angelou Quote

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.
- Maya Angelou Quote

We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.
- Maya Angelou Quote

While the rest of the world has been improving technology, Ghana has been improving the quality of man's humanity to man.
- Maya Angelou Quote

Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with shades of deeper meaning.
- Maya Angelou Quote