The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou Quotes

“the true nature of the human heart is as whimsical as spring weather. All signals may aim toward a fall of rain when suddenly the skies will clear.”
― Maya Angelou, The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou (Modern Library

“Don’t be in such a hurry to condemn a person because he doesn’t do what you do, or think as you think or as fast. There was a time when you didn’t know what you know today.”
― Maya Angelou, The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou (Modern Library

“change everything you don’t like about your life. But when you come to a thing you can’t change, then change the way you think about it. You’ll see it new, and maybe a new way to change it.”
― Maya Angelou, The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou

“A person must make the effort to learn, and growing is the inevitable reward of learning.”
― Maya Angelou, The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou

“Preparation is rarely easy and never beautiful.”
― Maya Angelou, The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou (Modern Library

“He so routinely disparaged other people’s importance that he didn’t notice he was degrading me.”
― Maya Angelou, The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou (Modern Library

“You are too good a woman to think small.”
― Maya Angelou, The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou (Modern Library

“She said that I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and even more intelligent than college professors.”
― Maya Angelou, The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou (Modern Library

“The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned. It impels mighty ambitions and dangerous capers. We amass great fortunes at the cost of our souls, or risk our lives in drug dens from London’s Soho, to San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury. We shout in Baptist churches, wear yarmulkes and wigs and argue even the tiniest points in the Torah, or worship the sun and refuse to kill cows for the starving. Hoping that by doing these things, home will find us acceptable or failing that, that we will forget our awful yearning for it.”
― Maya Angelou, The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou (Modern Library

“For centuries we had probed their faces, the angles of their bodies, the sounds of their voices and even their odors. Often our survival had depended upon the accurate reading of a white man’s chuckle or the disdainful wave of a white woman’s hand. Whites, on the other hand, always knew that no serious penalty threatened them if they misunderstood blacks. Whites were safely isolated from our concerns.”
― Maya Angelou, The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou (Modern Library

“To become wondrously successful and to sustain that success in any profession, one must be willing to relinquish many pleasures and be ready to postpone gratification.”
― Maya Angelou, The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou (Modern Library

“If you want to know how important you are to the world, stick your finger in a pond and pull it out. Will the hole remain?”
― Maya Angelou, The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou

“our people are in need of truth and I have tried and will continue to try to speak only truth to the people.”
― Maya Angelou, The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou (Modern Library

“I washed walls, polished door knobs and the tiny window. The scales and stench of defeat floated into the pail’s dirty water.”
― Maya Angelou, The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou

“sometimes you have to defend yourself from yourself.” When”
― Maya Angelou, The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou (Modern Library

“I love you, Mom. Maybe now you’ll have a chance to grow up.”
― Maya Angelou, The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou

“She’s one of our fans. She comes to the theater and allows us to curse and berate her, and that’s her contribution to our struggle.” Roscoe”
― Maya Angelou, The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou (Modern Library

“Avarice cripples virtue and lies in ambush for honesty.”
― Maya Angelou, The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou

“Boys seem to think that girls hold the keys to all happiness, because the female is supposed to have the right of consent and/or dissent. I’ve heard older men reflect on their youth, and an edge of hostile envy drags across their voices as they conjure up the girls who whetted but didn’t satisfy their sexual appetites. It’s interesting that they didn’t realize in those yearning days past, nor even in the present days of understanding, that if the female had the right to decide, she suffered from her inability to instigate. That is, she could only say yes or no if she was asked. She”
― Maya Angelou, The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou (Modern Library

“The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerence. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.”
― Maya Angelou, The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou (Modern Library

“Oh, Black known and unknown poets, how often have your auctioned pains sustained us?”
― Maya Angelou, The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou (Modern Library

“Sister, change everything you don’t like about your life. But when you come to a thing you can’t change, then change the way you think about it. You’ll see it new, and maybe a new way to change it.”
― Maya Angelou, The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou (Modern Library

“It is through the eyes of strangers that a parent can see their children as people.”
― Maya Angelou, The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou (Modern Library

“Malcolm X was as good as his word. He said, “Black people are letting white Americans know that the time is coming for ballots or bullets. They know it is useless to ask their enemy for justice. And surely whites are the enemies of blacks, otherwise how did we get to this country in the first place?”
― Maya Angelou, The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou (Modern Library

“We French, we have never, never, never had slavery, so we feel we don’t understand the American racism.” Maybe”
― Maya Angelou, The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou (Modern Library

“Nothing’s wrong with going to jail for something you believe in. Remember, jail was made for people. Not horses.”
― Maya Angelou, The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou (Modern Library

“The more you cry, the less you’ll pee, and peeing is more important.”
― Maya Angelou, The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou (Modern Library

“Hell, girl, everybody feels sorry for you, but nobody owes you a damn thing.”
― Maya Angelou, The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou (Modern Library

“It is my neck and my life. I will live it whole or not at all.” He”
― Maya Angelou, The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou (Modern Library

“We had expected three cots in our room, but found one large lumpy bed, a very worn carpet and a single overhead light. “You mean this is what these people got out of their revolution?” Martha daintily picked her way around the room. “Someone should tell them that they’re about due for another.” She wrinkled her pretty face in distaste. Ethel”
― Maya Angelou, The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou (Modern Library