Maya Angelou
Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning.
While I know myself as a creation of God, I am also obligated to realize and remember that everyone else and everything else are also God's creation.
We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.
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.
We all should know that diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all the threads of the tapestry are equal in value no matter what their color.
There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.
There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.
There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.
There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.
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.
The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are intelligence and necessity when unblunted by formal education.
The need for change bulldozed road down the center of my mind.
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.
Something made greater by ourselves and in turn that makes us greater.
Since time is the one immaterial object which we cannot influence - neither speed up nor slow down, add to nor diminish - it is an imponderably valuable gift.
Self-pity in its early stages is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable.
Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.
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.
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.
Of all the needs (there are none imaginary) a lonely child has, the one that must be satisfied, if there is going to be hope and a hope of wholeness, is the unshaken need for an unshakable God.