100 Best Maya Angelou Quotes About Life, Love, & Change

Best Maya Angelou Quotes about Life, Love, and Change. Maya Angelou was an American, poet, and civil rights activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, and several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows.

Maya Angelou Quotes

1. “The needs of a society determine its ethics.” —1969
2. “You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.” —2009
3. “Never whine. Whining lets a brute know that a victim is in the neighborhood.” —2009
4. “Be certain that you do not die without having done something wonderful for humanity.” —2009
5. “The first thing I do in the morning when I awaken is say, ‘Thank you, Lord!’ I’m grateful to be alive, and I’m going to try to tell the truth as well as I know and tell it as eloquently as I can so that people can hear it.” —2012
6. “Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.” —Undated
7. “You don’t have to think about doing the right thing. If you’re for the right thing, then you do it without thinking.” —1969
8. “The first time someone shows you who they are, believe them.” —Undated
9. “You can never be great at anything unless you love it.” —2000
10. “I’m grateful to be of use. I will not be misused or abused, but I will be of use to anybody.” —2012
11. “I have a certain way of being in this world, and I shall not, I shall not be moved.” —2014
12. “When we decide to be happy we accept the responsibility to bring happiness to someone else.” —2014
13. “Let the brain go to work, let it meet the heart and you will be able to forgive.” —2014
14. “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.”

Best Maya Angelou Quotes

1. “Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.”
2.  “Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future, and renders the present inaccessible.”
3. “This is a beautiful day, I’ve never seen this one before.”
4. “There is a spirit in all music. The spirit has the ability to conjure up thoughts even pictures of something that happened or you wished would happen or you anticipate happening. Music has the ability to create ideas in you and me.”
5. “I’m convinced of this: Good done anywhere is good done everywhere. For a change, start by speaking to people rather than walking by them like they’re stones that don’t matter. As long as you’re breathing, it’s never too late to do some good.”
6. “Peace my brother, peace my sister, peace my soul.”
7. “Try to live your life in a way that you will not regret years of useless virtue and inertia and timidity. Take up the battle, take it up! It’s yours, this is your life, this is your world.”
8. “Some people cannot see a good thing when it is right here, right now. Others can sense a good thing coming when it is days, months, or miles away.”
9. “I am a Woman Phenomenally. Phenomenal Woman, that’s me.”
10.  “Love life. Engage in it. Give it all you’ve got. Love it with a passion because life truly does give back, many times over, what you put into it.”
11. “Listen to yourself and in that quietude, you might hear the voice of God.”
12. “We are not our brother’s keeper; we are our brother and we are our sister. We must look past complexion and see community.

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Inspiring Maya Angelou Quotes About Love

1.  “The honorary duty of a human being is to love.”
2. “The greatest gift we give to each other is the telling of the truth.”
3. “Just like moons and like suns, With the certainty of tides, Just like hopes springing high,
4. Still I’ll rise.”
5.  “My wish for you is that you continue. Continue to be who and how you are, to astonish a mean world with your acts of kindness.”
6.  “My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.”
7. “If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded.”
8. “Dear Creator, You, the borderless sea of substance, we ask you to give to all the world that which we need most—Peace.”
9. “I had to trust life, since I was young enough to believe that life loved the person who dared to live it.”
10. “The idea of overcoming is always fascinating to me. It’s fascinating because few of us realize how much energy we have expended just to be here today. I don’t think we give ourselves enough credit for the overcoming.”
11. “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 their color; equal in importance no matter their texture.”
12.  “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.”
13.  “Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.”

Best Maya Angelou Quotes About Change  

1. “Develop enough courage so that you can stand up for yourself and then stand up for somebody else.”
2. “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”
3.  “What I really want to do is be a representative of my race, of the human race. I have a chance to show how kind we can be, how intelligent and generous we can be. I have a chance to teach and to love and to laugh.”
4. “I am grateful to have been loved and to be loved now and to be able to love, because love liberates. Love liberates it doesn’t just hold, that’s ego, love liberates!”
5.  “Each of us has that right, that possibility, to invent ourselves daily. If a person does not invent herself, she will be invented. So, to be bodacious enough to invent ourselves is wise.”
6. “Each time a woman stands up for herself, without knowing it possibly, without claiming it, she stands up for all women.”
7.  “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
8.  “If you’re going to live, leave a legacy. Make a mark on the world that can’t be erased.”

Conclusion

Maya Angelou quotes are one of the world’s most famous quotes.  She lived and chronicled an extraordinary life: rising from poverty, violence, and racism, she became a renowned author, poet, playwright, civil rights activist