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I Know That You That You May Encounter Many Defeats, But You Must Not Be Defeated. If You Accept That You Have Been Defeated, You Give Power To The Force That Is Trying To Defeat You.

-Maya Angelou

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I Know That You

Maya Angelou

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I Know That You That You May Encounter Many Defeats, But You Must Not Be Defeated. If You Accept That You Have Been Defeated, You Give Power To The Force That Is Trying To Defeat You.

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Look Heavenward And Speak The Word Aloud. Peace. We Look At Our World And Speak The Word Aloud. Peace.

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I Think A Hero Is Any Person Really Intent On Making This A Better Place For All People.

I Have Great Respect For The Past.

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I Love Living. I Love That I'm Alive To Love My Age. There Are Many People Who Went To Bed Just As I Did Yesterday Evening And Didn't Wake This Morning. I Love And Feel Very Blessed That I Did. I Love, Too, That I Know A Little More Today Than I Did Yesterday, Or I Simply Know It More Profoundly.

Never Make Someone A Priority When All You Are To Them Is An Option.

"baby, You Know?" My Mother Once Said To Me. "i Think You're The Greatest Woman I've Ever Met - And I'm Not Including My Mother Or Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt In That." She Said, "you Are Very Intelligent And You're Very Kind, And Those Two Qualities Do Not Often Go Together." Then She Went Across The Street And Got In Her Car, And I Went The Other Way Down To The Streetcar. I Thought, "suppose She's Right. She's Intelligent - And She's Too Mean To Lie." You See, A Parent Has The Chance - And Maybe The Responsibility - To Liberate Her Child. And My Mom Had Liberated Me When I Was 17.

When You Know You Are Of Worth, You Don't Have To Raise Your Voice, You Don't Have To Become Rude, You Don't Have To Become Vulgar; You Just Are. And You Are Like The Sky Is, As The Air Is, The Same Way Water Is Wet. It Doesn't Have To Protest.

The Intensity With Which Young People Live Demands That They "blank Out" As Often As Possible.

Ask For What You Want And Be Prepared To Get It!

The Real Difficulty Is To Overcome How You Think About Yourself. If We Don't Have That We Never Grow, We Never Learn, And Sure As Hell We Should Never Teach.

I Had To Trust Life And Believe That Life Loved The Person Who Dared To Live It.

I Do Not Believe That The Accident Of Birth Makes People Sisters And Brothers. It Makes Them Siblings. Gives Them Mutuality Of Parentage. Sisterhood And Brotherhood Are Conditions People Have To Work At. It's A Serious Matter. You Compromise, You Give, You Take, You Stand Firm, And You're Relentless...and It Is An Investment. Sisterhood Means If You Happen To Be In Burma And I Happen To Be In San Diego And I'm Married To Someone Who Is Very Jealous And You're Married To Somebody Who Is Very Possessive, If You Call Me In The Middle Of The Night, I Have To Come.

Because Of Our Routines We Forget That Life Is An Ongoing Adventure.

The Most Called-upon Prerequisite Of A Friend Is An Accessible Ear.

Your Life Is Much More Important That You Can Imagine... It Is Your First Treasure.

Nothing Will Work Unless You Do.

There's A World Of Difference Between Truth And Facts. Facts Can Obscure The Truth.

By Love I Don't Mean Indulgence. I Do Not Mean Sentimentality. And In This Instance, I Don't Even Mean Romance. I Mean That Condition That Allowed Humans To Dream Of God.that Condition That Allowed The "dumb" To Write Spirituals And Russian Songs And Irish Lilts. That Is Love, And It's So Much Larger Than Anything I Can Conceive.

Blacks Concede That Hurrawing, Jibing, Jiving, Signifying, Disrespecting, Cursing, Even Outright Insults Might Be Acceptable Under Particular Conditions, But Aspersions Cast Against One's Family Call For Immediate Attack.

The Most Important Thing I Can Tell You About Aging Is This: If You Really Feel That You Want To Have An Off-the-shoulder Blouse And Some Big Beads And Thong Sandals And A Dirndl Skirt And A Magnolia In Your Hair, Do It. Even If You're Wrinkled.

A Wise Woman Wishes To Be No One's Enemy; A Wise Woman Refuses To Be Anyone's Victim.

Pretty Women Wonder Where My Secret Lies. I'm Not Cute Or Built To Suit A Fashion Model's Size But When I Start To Tell Them, They Think I'm Telling Lies. I Say, It's In The Reach Of My Arms The Span Of My Hips, The Stride Of My Step, The Curl Of My Lips. I'm A Woman Phenomenally. Phenomenal Woman, That's Me.

I've Learned That Every Day You Should Reach Out And Touch Someone. People Love A Warm Hug, Or Just A Friendly Pat On The Back.

Here On The Pulse Of This New Day You May Have The Grace To Look Up And Out And Into Your Sister's Eyes, Into Your Brother's Face, Your Country And Say Simply Very Simply With Hope Good Morning.

We May Encounter Many Defeats, But We Must Not Be Defeated. It May Even Be Necessary To Encounter The Defeat So That We Can Know Who We Are. So That We Can See, "oh, That Happened, And I Rose. I Did Get Knocked Down Flat In Front Of The Whole World, And I Rose. I Didn't Run Away; I Rose Right Where I'd Been Knocked Down." That's How You Get To Know Yourself.

Most Plain Girls Are Virtuous Because Of The Scarcity Of Opportunity To Be Otherwise.

In Today's Climate In Our Country, Which Is Sickened With The Pollution Of Pollution, Threatened With The Prominence Of Aids, Riddled With Burgeoning Racism, Rife With Growing Huddles Of The Homeless, We Need Art And We Need Art In All Forms. We Need All Methods Of Art To Be Present, Everywhere Present, And All The Time Present.

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.

I Did Then What I Knew How To Do. Now That I Know Better, I Do Better.

Inscribed On The Temple Of Apollo

Self Confidence

Don't Let Anybody Raise You. You've Been Raised.

You Know, I Never Trust People Who Don't Laugh, Who Said, "i Am Serious" And Act As If They Put Airplane Glue On The Back Of Their Hands And Stuck The Glue To Their Foreheads. I Think, "you're Not Serious; You're Boring As Hell."

Each Of Us, Famous Or Infamous, Is A Role Model For Somebody, And If We Aren't, We Should Behave As Though We Are -- Cheerful, Kind, Loving, Courteous. Because You Can Be Sure Someone Is Watching And Taking Deliberate And Diligent Notes.

Spirit Is An Invisible Force Made Visible In All Life.

I Am Serious, So I Laugh A Lot. You Need To Laugh. You Don't Laugh Enough. I Don't Trust Anyone Who Doesn't Laugh.

This Is What I Am Learning, At 82 Years Old: The Main Thing Is To Be In Love With The Search For Truth.

Life Is Pure Adventure, And The Sooner We Realize That, The Quicker We Will Be Able To Treat Life As Art.

Everything Costs And Costs The Earth.

Being A Woman Is Hard Work.

If You Want To Liberate Someone, Love Them.not Be In Love With Them - That's Dangerous. If You're In Love With Your Children, You're In Their Lives All The Time. Leave Them Alone! Let Them Grow And Make Some Mistakes. Tell Them, "you Can Come Home. My Arms Are Here - And My Mouth Is Too." When You Really Love Them, You Don't Want To Possess Them. You Don't Say, "i Love You And I Want You Here With Me."

I Am A Woman Phenomenally, Phenomenal Woman That Is Your Grandmother, That Is Your Mother, That Is Your Sister, That Is You And That Is Me.

Phenomenal Woman

I’m Grateful For Being Here, For Being Able To Think, For Being Able To See, For Being Able To Taste, For Appreciating Love – For Knowing That It Exists In A World So Rife With Vulgarity, With Brutality And Violence, And Yet Love Exists. I’m Grateful To Know That It Exists.

What You're Supposed To Do When You Don't Like A Thing Is Change It. If You Can't Change It, Change The Way You Think About It. Don't Complain.

I Come As One, But Stand As 10,000.

Fighting For One's Freedom, Struggling Towards Being Free, Is Like Struggling To Be A Poet Or A Good Christian Or A Good Jew Or A Good Muslim Or Good Zen Buddhist. You Work All Day Long And Achieve Some Kind Of Level Of Success By Nightfall, Go To Sleep And Wake Up The Next Morning With The Job Still To Be Done. So You Start All Over Again.

Success Is Liking Yourself, Liking What You Do, And Liking How You Do It.

In Order To Be A Mentor, And An Effective One, One Must Care. You Must Care. You Don't Have To Know How Many Square Miles Are In Idaho, You Don't Need To Know What Is The Chemical Makeup Of Chemistry, Or Of Blood Or Water. Know What You Know And Care About The Person, Care About What You Know And Care About The Person You're Sharing With.

We Are All Human; Therefore, Nothing Human Can Be Alien To Us.

If You Have A Song To Sing, Who Are You Not To Open Your Mouth And Sing To The World?

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.

Yet It Is Only Love Which Sets Us Free.

Just Like Moons And Suns, With Certainty Of Tides, Just Like Hopes Springing High, Still I'll Rise.

The Desire To Reach For The Stars Is Ambitious. The Desire To Reach Hearts Is Wise.

The Woman Who Survives Intact And Happy Must Be At Once Tender And Tough.

Those Of Us Who Submitted Or Surrendered Our Ideas And Dreams And Identities To The 'leaders' Must Take Back Our Rights, Our Identities, Our Responsibilities.

I Wouldn't Trade Anything For My Story Now.

Some Of Us Are Timid. We Think We Have Something To Lose So We Don't Try For That Next Hill.

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