20 Thought-Provoking Quotes By Maya Angelou

This article contains 20 thought-provoking quotations by the American poet, singer, memoirist, and civil rights activist, Maya Angelou.

“If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.”

“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

“Try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud.”

“It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.”

“Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning.”

“Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.”

“Whatever you want to do, if you want to be great at it, you have to love it and be able to make sacrifices for it.”

“Some critics will write ‘Maya Angelou is a natural writer’ – which is right after being a natural heart surgeon.”

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

“If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities.”

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

“I believe that every person is born with talent.”

“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.”

“I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.”

“The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.”

“It’s one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive. Forgive everybody.”

“I think that that’s the wisest thing – to prevent illness before we try to cure something.”

“I wrote some of the worst poetry west from the Mississippi River, but I wrote. And I finally sometimes got it right.”

“Eating is so intimate. It’s very sensual. When you invite someone to sit at your table and you want to cook for them, you’re inviting a person into your life.”

“I got my own back.”

Conclusion

I hope you find these quotations thought-provoking – it was difficult to choose just 20 from the hundreds that are attributed to this prolific writer.

You can also download a file containing all 20 of the above images if you want to use them as wallpaper on your computer, for example – just click here.

(This file is a Zip file, so if you don’t have the means to unzip it, you can get a free trial of WinZip here.)

Additional Resources

These are suggestions for those who wish to delve deeper into any of the above:

1. The Writings Of Maya Angelou

PS: The photo at the top of this article is used courtesy of the photographer Brian Stansberry.