Quotes by Maya Angelou

About Maya Angelou:

Maya Angelou is best known for her series of seven autobiographies, which focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), tells of her life up to the age of 17 and brought her international recognition and acclaim.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

If more Africans had eaten missionaries, the continent would be in better shape

Maya Angelou

Don't let the man bring you down.

Maya Angelou

I'm young as morning and fresh as dew. Everybody loves me and so do you.

Maya Angelou

...Lovers think quite different thoughts while lying side by side.

Maya Angelou

A certain person wondered why a big strong girl like me wouldn't keep a job which paid a normal salary. I took my time to lead her and to read her every page. Even minimal people can't survive on minimal wage. A certain person wondered why I wait all...

Maya Angelou
Great quotes by Maya Angelou, Book quotes by Maya Angelou, UberQuotes

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

Maya Angelou

When things were very bad his soul just crawled behind his heart and curled up and went to sleep

Maya Angelou

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 w...

Maya Angelou

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...

Maya Angelou

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

Maya Angelou

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 w...

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 c...

Maya Angelou

The caged bird sings with a fearful trill, of things unknown, but longed for still, and his tune is heard on the distant hill, for the caged bird sings of freedom.

Maya Angelou

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.

Maya Angelou

Language is man's way of communicating with his fellow man and it is language alone which separates him from the lower animals.

Maya Angelou

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

Few, if any, survive their teens

Maya Angelou

I had given up some youth for knowledge, but my gain was more valuable than the loss

Maya Angelou

To be left alone on the tightrope of youthful unknowing is to experience the excruciating beauty of full freedom and the threat of eternal indecision.

Maya Angelou

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 ada...

Maya Angelou

I will look after you and I will look after anybody you say needs to be looked after, any way you say. I am here. I brought my whole self to you. I am your mother.

Maya Angelou

Author Bio

  • NameMaya Angelou
  • DescriptionAmerican author and poet
  • BornApril 4, 1928
  • DiedMay 28, 2014
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionPoet; Actor; Dancer; Film Producer; Television Producer; Playwright; Film Director; Professor; Screenwriter; Writer; Essayist; Songwriter; Autobiographer
  • WorksI Know Why The Caged Bird Sings; On The Pulse Of Morning
  • AwardsMarian Anderson Award; National Women's Hall Of Fame