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We Can See, From California To New York, From Maine To Florida, Seattle To New Mexico - Everywhere There Are Women's Groups. Everywhere There Are Women Who Have Gotten Together To Examine Global Warming, And Women Who Have Gotten Together To Prepare Each Other For Single Parenting - There Are Women Who Have Come Together To Be Supportive To Those Whose Mates Are In Prison, Male Or Female, Partners Are In Prison. All Sorts Of Gatherings Of Women. I Mean, I'm Just Celebrating My 80th Year On This Planet, And I Look Back 50 Years Ago And There Was Nothing Like That.

-Maya Angelou

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We Can See, From

Maya Angelou

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We Can See, From California To New York, From Maine To Florida, Seattle To New Mexico - Everywhere There Are Women's Groups. Everywhere There Are Women Who Have Gotten Together To Examine Global Warming, And Women Who Have Gotten Together To Prepare Each Other For Single Parenting - There Are Women Who Have Come Together To Be Supportive To Those Whose Mates Are In Prison, Male Or Female, Partners Are In Prison. All Sorts Of Gatherings Of Women. I Mean, I'm Just Celebrating My 80th Year On This Planet, And I Look Back 50 Years Ago And There Was Nothing Like That.

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All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes.

Courage Is The Most Important Of All The Virtues, Because Without Courage You Can't Practice Any Other Virtue Consistently. You Can Practice Any Virtue Erratically, But Nothing Consistently Without Courage.

Ain't Nothin' To It, But To Do It.

Let Us Live So We Do Not Regret Years Of Inertia And Ignorance, So When We Die We Can Say All Of Our Energy Was Dedicated To The Noble Liberation Of The Human Mind And Spirit, Beginning With My Own.

The Devil Lives In Our Mistakes, The Lord Lives In Our Rights. Who Lives In Our Ignorance, And Who Wins After All?

If You Have A Napkin, You Need Another Napkin To Receive Back All The Blessings You'll Get. And You Keep Giving. Then You Need A Towel To Receive All The Gifts. And You Continue Giving. Finally, You Need A Tablecloth. And You Continue Giving - Not Stupidly, But You Give. And When You Give, You Finally Have To Move Out And Get A Second House, And A Third House And A Fourth.it Is A No - Fail, Incontrovertible Reality: If You Get, Give. If You Learn, Teach. You Can't Do Anything With That Except Do It.

It's Still Scary Every Time I Go Back To The Past. Each Morning, My Heart Catches. When I Get There, I Remember How The Light Was, Where The Draft Was Coming From, What Odors Were In The Air. When I Write, I Get All The Weeping Out.

If I Have A Monument In This World, It Is My Son.

You Have To Develop Ways So That You Can Take Up For Yourself, And Then You Take Up For Someone Else. And So Sooner Or Later, You Have Enough Courage To Really Stand Up For The Human Race And Say, 'i'm A Representative. '

Dare To Let Your Dreams Reach Beyond You...

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've Learned That Regardless Of Your Relationship With Your Parents, You'll Miss Them When They're Gone From Your Life.

Let Me Tell So Much Truth. I Want To Tell The Truth In My Work. The Truth Will Lead Me To All.

Telling The Truth

Let's Tell The Truth To People. When People Ask, 'how Are You?' Have The Nerve Sometimes To Answer Truthfully. You Must Know, However, That People Will Start Avaoiding You Because, They, Too, Have Knees That Pain Them And Heads That Hurt And They Don't Want To Know About Yours. But Think Of It This Way: If People Avoid You, You Will Have More Time To Meditate And Do Fine Research On A Cure For Whatever Truly Afflicts You.

Martin Luther King Was A Human Being With A Brilliant Mind, A Powerful Heart, And Insight, And Courage And Also With A Sense Of Humor. So He Was Accessible.

Ritie, Don't Worry 'cause You Ain't Pretty. Plenty Pretty Women I Seen Digging Ditches Or Worse. You Smart. I Swear To God, I Rather You Have A Good Mind Than A Cute Behind.

We Delight In The Beauty Of The Butterfly, But Rarely Admit The Changes It Has Gone Through To Achieve That Beauty.

Whenever Something Went Wrong When I Was Young - If I Had A Pimple Or If My Hair Broke - My Mom Would Say, 'sister Mine, I'm Going To Make You Some Soup.' And I Really Thought The Soup Would Make My Pimple Go Away Or My Hair Stronger.

When People See The Laughing Face, Even If They're Jealous Of It, Their Burden Is Lightened. But Do It First For Yourself. Laugh And Dare To Try To Love Somebody, Starting With Yourself.

Whining Is Just Unbecoming.

Achievement Brings Its Own Anticlimax.

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.

Take A Month And Show Some Kindness For The Folks Who Thought That Blindness Was An Illness That Affected Eyes Alone.

The Public Library Building, In My View, Is Just A Little Lower Than The Church, The Cathedral, The Temple, The Synagogue And The Mosque. Within Those Walls And Along Those Stacks, I Have Found Security And Assurance.

Everyone Grows Old But Not Everyone Grows Up.

The Autobiographer Looks At Life Through The Lens Of His Or Her Own Life And Really Uses Herself Or Himself As The Jumping-off Place To Examine The Social Mores And The Economic And Political Climates. In A Way, The Autobiography Becomes History As Well As The Story Of One Person, For It Becomes The Story Of A Family Or The Story Of The State Or Nation.

You May Encounter Many Defeats, But You Must Not Be Defeated. In Fact, It May Be Necessary To Encounter The Defeats, So You Can Know Who You Are, What You Can Rise From, How You Can Still Come Out Of It.

I'm Grateful To Intelligent People. That Doesn't Mean Educated. That Doesn't Mean Intellectual. I Mean Really Intelligent. What Black Old People Used To Call 'mother Wit' Means Intelligence That You Had In Your Mother's Womb. That's What You Rely On. You Know What's Right To Do.

Rainbows Are People Whose Lives Are Bright, Shining Examples For Others.

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.

I Don't Think Modesty Is A Very Good Virtue, If It Is A Virtue At All. A Modest Person Will Drop The Modesty In A Minute. It's A Learned Affectation.

Every Person Needs To Take One Day Away. A Day In Which One Consciously Separates The Past From The Future. Jobs, Family, Employers, And Friends Can Exist One Day Without Any One Of Us, And If Our Egos Permit Us To Confess, They Could Exist Eternally In Our Absence. Each Person Deserves A Day Away In Which No Problems Are Confronted, No Solutions Searched For. Each Of Us Needs To Withdraw From The Cares Which Will Not Withdraw From Us.

I Find It Interesting That The Meanest Life, The Poorest Existence, Is Attributed To God's Will, But As Human Beings Become More Affluent, As Their Living Standard And Style Begin To Ascend The Material Scale, God Descends The Scale Of Responsibility At Commensurate Speed.

I Am Always Talking About The Human Condition And About American Society In Particular: What It Is Like To Be Human, What Makes Us Weep, What Makes Us Fall And Stumble And Somehow Rise And Go On From Darkness Into Darkness And That Darkness Carpeted.

Women Been Gittin' Pregnant Ever Since Eve Ate That Apple.

I Get Up In The Morning, And I'm Reluctant To Turn On The Television.

Effective Action Is Always Unjust.

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 Trouble For The Thief Is Not How To Steal The Chief’s Bugle, But Where To Blow It.

A Woman In Harmony With Her Spirit Is Like A River Flowing.

The Holy Spirit Upon My Left Leads My Feet Without Ceasing Into The Camp Of The Righteous And Into The Tents Of The Free.

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.

We Are Only As Blind As We Want To Be.

Women Should Be Tough, Tender, Laugh As Much As Possible, And Live Long Lives. The Struggle For Equality Continues Unabated, And The Woman Warrior Who Is Armed With Wit And Courage Will Be Among The First To Celebrate Victory.

We Need Joy As We Need Air. We Need Love As We Need Water. We Need Each Other As We Need The Earth We Share.

I've Learned That You Can Tell A Lot About A Person By The Way (s)he Handles These Three Things: A Rainy Day, Lost Luggage, And Tangled Christmas Tree Lights.

You Can Only Become Truly Accomplished At Something You Love. Don’t Make Money Your Goal. Instead Pursue The Things You Love Doing And Then Do Them So Well That People Can’t Take Their Eyes Off Of You.

We Spend Precious Hours Fearing The Inevitable. It Would Be Wise To Use That Time Adoring Our Families, Cherishing Our Friends And Living Our Lives.

The Poetry You Read Has Been Written For You, Each Of You - Black, White, Hispanic, Man, Woman, Gay, Straight.

My People Couldn't Have Survived Slavery Without Having Hope That It Would Get Better. And There's Some Songs From The 19th And 18th Century That Say [sings], "by And By, By And By, I Will Lay Down, This Heavy Load." And I Mean, So Many Songs That Spoke Of Hope And Understand It Better By And By. Amazing Songs. So That The Slaves, Just Knowing That He, She, Did Not Have The Right Legally To Walk Within One Inch Away From Where The Slave Owner Dictated, And Yet The Same Person, Wrote And Sang With Fervor, "if The Lord Wants Somebody, Here Am I, Send Me." It's Amazing.

I Was Grateful To See President Obama's Victory Speech. I Was Over The Moon To See The Audience. There Were About 60 Percent White Voters The Other 40 Percent Were African Americans, Asian, Spanish Speaking Etc. I Wept At That Spectacle, It Told Me That The Pundits That Continue In Our Country To Try To Polarize Us, To Keep Us Apart, Are Not Succeeding. Americans Are Waking Up Not Only To The Truth, But The Truth In Each Other. Hallelujah!

I Think Clinton, After Getting Into Office And Into Washington, Was Shocked At Being Bludgeoned. So He Spent Time Trying To Be All Things To All People - One Way Guaranteed Not To Be Successful Or Respected In A Lion's Den. You Can't Just Play Around With All Those Big Cats - You've Got To Take Somebody On.

Surviving Is Important. Thriving Is Elegant.

But From A Distance. I Would Have Left You Whole And Wholly For The Delectation Of Those Who Wanted More And Cared Less.

In A World So Rife With Vulgarity, With Brutality And Violence, Love Exists. I’m Grateful To Know That It Exists.

The Love Of The Family, The Love Of One Person Can Heal. It Heals The Scars Left By A Larger Society. A Massive, Powerful Society.

I Agreed A Long Time Ago, I Would Not Live At Any Cost. If I Am Moved Or Forced Away From What I Think Is The Right Thing, I Will Not Do It.

Love Is That Condition In The Human Spirit So Profound That It Empowers Us To Develop Courage; To Trust That Courage And Build Bridges With It; To Trust Those Bridges And Cross Over Them So We Can Attempt To Reach Each Other.

The Most Important Thing Is To Dare.

Important Things

My Entire Stay There [high School] Might Have Been Time Lost If It Hadn't Been For The Unique Personality Of A Brilliant Teacher. Miss Kirwin Was That Rare Educator Who Was In Love With Information. I Will Always Believe That Her Love Of Teaching Came Not So Much From Her Liking For Students But From Her Desire To Make Sure That Some Of The Things She Knew Would Find Repositories So That They Could Be Shared Again.

I Not Only Have The Right To Stand Up For Myself, But I Have The Responsibility. I Can't Ask Somebody Else To Stand Up For Me If I Won't Stand Up For Myself. And Once You Stand Up For Yourself, You'd Be Surprised That People Say, "can I Be Of Help?".

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.

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.

When I Write, I Tend To Twist My Hair. Something For My Small Mind To Do, I Guess.

If I'm The People's Poet, Then I Ought To Be In People's Hands - And, I Hope, In Their Heart.

You May Shoot Me With Your Words, You May Cut Me With Your Eyes, You May Kill Me With Your Hatefulness, But Still, Like Air, I'll Rise!

Have Enough Courage To Love.

Courage To Love

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.

Everything In The Universe Has A Rhythm, Everything Dances.

My Mother Had Said Me, "all Right, You've Been Raised, So Don't Let Anybody Else Raise You. You Know The Difference Between Right And Wrong. Do Right. And Remember - You Can Always Come Home." And She Continued To Liberate Me Until She Died. On The Night She Died, I Went To The Hospital. I Told My Mom, "let Me Tell You About Yourself. You Deserved A Great Daughter, And You Got One. And You Liberated Me To Be One. So If It's Time For You To Go, You May Have Done Everything God Brought You Here To Do."

You Don't Want Modesty, You Want Humility. Humility Comes From Inside Out. It Says Someone Was Here Before Me And I'm Here Because I've Been Paid For. I Have Something To Do And I Will Do That Because I'm Paying For Someone Else Who Has Yet To Come.

I've Learned That Whenever I Decide Something With An Open Heart, I Usually Make The Right Decision. I've Learned That Even When I Have Pains, I Don't Have To Be One. 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. I've Learned That I Still Have A Lot To Learn.

I'm Here, And I Do My Best To Be Completely Centered At The Place I'm At, Then I Go Forward To The Next Place.

In The Fifties, You Have Your Beauty As A Treat. I Thought That Until I Hit The Sixties.in Your Sixties, Life Decides To Reward You With Certain Kinds Of Profound Appreciation, So That People Name Their Children And Schools And Libraries After You! And You Still Have Your Sexuality And Your Sensuality. If You Want Your Sexuality, You Still Have It.

You Can't Be Consistently Fair, Consistently Generous, Consistently Just, Or Consistently Merciful. You Can Be Anything Erratically, But To Be That Thing Time After Time After Time, You Have To Have Courage.

I Believe That Each Of Us Comes From The Creator Trailing Wisps Of Glory. So At This Wonderful, Young Age Of 65, I Don't Know Yet What The Lord Has For Me To Do. I Try To Live Up To The Energy And To The Calling, But I Wouldn't Dare Say I Have Even Scratched The Surface Yet.

I Encourage Courtesy. To Accept Nothing Less Than Courtesy, And To Give Nothing Less Than Courtesy.

Nothing Will Work Unless You Do.

Hope And Fear Cannot Occupy The Same Space. Invite One To Stay.

Mind Your Own Business

Hopes And Fears

Life Loves To Be Taken By The Lapel And Told: 'i'm With You Kid. Let's Go.'

You Can't Use Up Creativity. The More You Use, The More You Have.

I Would Say You Might Encounter Many Defeats But You Must Never Be Defeated, Ever. In Fact, It Might Even Be Necessary To Confront Defeat. It Might Be Necessary, To Get Over It, All The Way Through It, And Go On. I Would Teach Her To Laugh A Lot. Laugh A Lot At The - And The Silliest Things And Be Very, Very Serious. I'd Teach Her To Love Life, I Can Bet You That.

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.

The Needs Of A Society Determine Its Ethics, And In The Black American Ghettos The Hero Is That Man Who Is Offered Only The Crumbs From His Country's Table But By Ingenuity And Courage Is Able To Take For Himself A Lucullan Feast. Hence The Janitor Who Lives In One Room But Sports A Robin's-egg-blue Cadillac Is Not Laughed At But Admired, And The Domestic Who Buys Forty-dollar Shoes Is Not Criticized But Is Appreciated. We Know That They Have Put To Use Their Full Mental And Physical Powers. Each Single Gain Feeds Into The Gains Of The Body Collective.

A Woman Who Is Convinced That She Deserves To Accept Only The Best Challenges Herself To Give The Best. Then She Is Living Phenomenally.

Poetry Is Music Written For The Human Voice.

The Honorary Duty Of A Human Being Is To Love.

She Comprehended The Perversity Of Life, That In The Struggle Lies The Joy.

I've Learned That You Shouldn't Go Through Life With A Catcher's Mitt On Both Hands; You Need To Be Able To Throw Something Back.

To Grow Up Is To Stop Putting Blame On Parents.

To Be Left Alone On The Tightrope Of Youthful Unknowing Is To Experience The Excruciating Beauty Of Full Freedom And The Threat Of Eternal Indecision.

You May Shoot Me With Your Words, You May Cut Me With Your Eyes, You May Kill Me With Your Hatefulness, But Still, Like Air, I'll Rise!

I Wish That We Could Look Into Each Other's Faces, In Each Other's Eyes, And See Our Own Selves. I Hope That The Children Have Not Been So Scarred By Their Upbringing That They Only Think Fear When They See Someone Else Who Looks Separate From Them.

Just Because I Am Wheelchair-bound Doesn't Mean I Don't Get Around.

But Still, Like Air, I'll Rise

There's Something Beautiful About The Fact That Obama Was Not Just Elected, But Elected Decisively Across Racial, And Socio-economic And Cultural Groups And That We All Celebrated In His Win.

Facts Can Obscure The Truth.

Creativity Or Talent, Like Electricity, Is Something I Don't Understand But Something I'm Able To Harness And Use.

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

All Great Artists Draw From The Same Resource: The Human Heart, Which Tells Us That We Are All More Alike Than We Are Unalike.

I Note The Obvious Differences Between Each Sort And Type, But We Are More Alike, My Friends, Than We Are Unalike.

In The 16th Century, [niccolò] Machiavelli - In An Attempt To Get Back In The Good Graces Of The Powerful - Wrote A Slim Volume Called The Prince. In That Book He Showed The Powers That Be How To Control The People. That Book Is A Statement: Separate And Rule, Divide And Conquer. That's Five Hundred Years Ago And It Still Works, Because We Allow Ourselves To Be Lead Around With Holes Through Our Noses.

Without Defeats, How Do You Really Know Who The Hell You Are? If You Never Had To Stand Up To Something - To Get Up, To Be Knocked Down, And To Get Up Again - Life Can Walk Over You Wearing Football Cleats. But Each Time You Do Get Up, You're Bigger, Taller, Finer, More Beautiful, More Kind, More Understanding, More Loving. Each Time You Get Up, You're More Inclusive. More People Can Stand Under Your Umbrella.

I Would Say You Might Encounter Many Defeats But You Must Never Be Defeated, Ever. In Fact, It Might Even Be Necessary To Confront Defeat. It Might Be Necessary, To Get Over It, All The Way Through It, And Go On. I Would Teach Her To Laugh A Lot. Laugh A Lot At The - And The Silliest Things And Be Very, Very Serious. I'd Teach Her To Love Life, I Can Bet You That.

Had I Known That The Heart Breaks Slowly, Dismantling Itself Into Unrecognizable Plots Of Misery... Had I Known Yet I Would Have Loved You, Your Brash And Insolent Beauty, Your Heavy Comedic Face And Knowledge Of Sweet Delights, But From A Distance I Would Have Left You Whole And Wholly For The Delectation Of Those Who Wanted More And Cared Less.

No One Can Take The Place Of A Friend, No One.

One Of The Saddest Things In The World Is To See A Cynical Young Person.

Seek Patience And Passion In Equal Amounts. Patience Alone Will Not Build The Temple. Passion Alone Will Destroy Its Walls.

Just Do Right. Right May Not Be Expedient, It May Not Be Profitable, But It Will Satisfy Your Soul. It Brings You The Kind Of Protection That Bodyguards Can’t Give You. So 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.

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.

Try, Start Always At Home. This Is My Encouragement To All Writers, Start At Home. All Virtues And Vices Begin At Home, And Then Spread Abroad.

Modesty Is A Learned Affectation. It's No Good. Humility Is Great, Because Humility Says, 'there Was Someone Before Me. I'm Following In Somebody's Footsteps.'

When I Look Back, I Am So Impressed Again With The Life-giving Power Of Literature. If I Were A Young Person Today, Trying To Gain A Sense Of Myself In The World, I Would Do That Again By Reading, Just As I Did When I Was Young.

The Nice Thing About Hope Is That You Can Give It To Someone Else, Someone Who Needs It Even More Than You Do, And You Will Find You Have Not Given Yours Away At All.

On The Day Of Your Birth, The Creator Filled Countless Storehouses, Set Aside For Your Use And Yours Alone.

I'm A Spring Leaf Trembling In Anticipation.

One Isn't Born With Courage. One Develops It By Doing Small Courageous Things-in The Way That If One Sets Out To Pick Up A 100-pound Bag Of Rice, One Would Be Advised To Start With A Five-pound Bag, Then 10 Pounds, Then 20 Pounds, And So Forth, Until One Builds Up Enough Muscle To Lift The 100-pound Bag. It's The Same Way With Courage. You Do Small Courageous Things That Require Some Mental And Spiritual Exertion.

The More You Know Of Your History, The More Liberated You Are.

I Try To See Every Day As A Celebration.

There's Something Which Impels Us To Show Our Inner Souls. The More Courageous We Are, The More We Succeed In Explaining What We Know.

In Diversity There Is Beauty And There Is Strength.

On This Platform Of Peace, We Can Create A Language To Translate Ourselves To Ourselves And To Each Other.

I've Learned That Making A 'living' Is Not The Same Thing As 'making A Life'.

When I Love Somebody, I Like Him To Be Around; I Like Him To Take Me Out To Dinner; I Like To Look At The Sunset With Him. But If Not, I Love Him And I Hope He's Looking At The Same Sun I Am. Loving Someone Liberates The Lover As Well As The Beloved. And That Kind Of Love Comes With Age. Some Of This Wisdom Came To Me After I Was 50 Or 60.

Lord Keep Your Arm Around My Shoulder And Your Hand Over My Mouth.

Its Not Where Your Dreams Take You, Its Where You Take Your Dreams.

The Country Didn't Get That Way In A Week; We've Had Years And Years Of Getting Behind In Our Economy. So President [barack] Obama Stepped Into A Hellhole And People Wanted Him To Change It As Soon As He Came In. But He's Got His Adversaries To Deal With In The House And Senate, So It's Not Easy.

Alone, All Alone Nobody, But Nobody Can Make It Out Here Alone.

My Great Blessing Is My Son, But I Have Daughters. I Have White Ones And Black Ones And Fat Ones And Thin Ones And Pretty Ones And Plain. I Have Gay Ones And Straight. I Have Daughters. I Have Asian Ones, I Have Jewish Ones, I Have Muslim Ones.

You Can't Get Too High For Somebody To Bring You Down.

There Is A World Of Difference Between Facts And The Truth. You Can Have So Many Facts That You Don't Deal With The Truth. You Never Get To The Truth. You Have The Places Where, The People Who, The Times When, The Reasons Why, The Methods How - Blah Blah. And Never Get To The Human Truth. The Human Truth Is As Elusive As The Air. And As Important As The Air.

Indeed We Have Souls. And If A Person Is Religious, I Think It's Good, It Helps You A Bit. But If You're Not, At Least You Can Have The Sense That There Is A Condition Inside You Which Looks At The Stars With Amazement And Awe. That Listens To Water With A River Flowing, Or Water Falling In Rain And Is Lifted Up By That And Listens To A Wonderful Singer, Wonderful Musicians, Listens To Maybe Duke Ellington Or Frank Sinatra Or Listens To Odetta And Mary J. Blige. Yes, And Thinks Whoo! And Thinks, Yes, Hmm, All Right Now. My Soul Has Been Washed. I Feel Better, I Feel Stronger.

Hope Does Not Take Away Your Problems. It Can Lift You Above Them.

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

I Never Expected Anyone To Take Care Of Me, But In My Wildest Dreams And Juvenile Yearnings, I Wanted The House With The Picket Fence From June Allyson Movies. I Knew That Was Yearning Like One Yearns To Fly.

Pretty Women Wonder Where My Secret Lies.

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.

I Could Fall In Love With A Sumo Wrestler If He Told Stories And Made Me Laugh. Obviously, It Would Be Easier If Someone Was African-american And Lived Next Door And Went To The Same Church. Because Then I Wouldn't Have To Translate.

Falling In Love

Strictly Speaking, One Cannot Legislate Love, But What One Can Do Is Legislate Fairness And Justice. If Legislation Does Not Prohibit Our Living Side By Side, Sooner Or Later Your Child Will Fall On The Pavement And I'll Be The One To Pick Her Up. Or One Of My Children Will Not Be Able To Get Into The House And You'll Have To Say, "stop Here Until Your Mom Comes Here." Legislation Affords Us The Chance To See If We Might Love Each Other.

Each Of Us Has The Right And The Responsibility To Assess The Roads Which Lie Ahead, And Those Over Which We Have Traveled, And If The Future Road Looms Ominous Or Unpromising, And The Roads Back Uninviting, Then We Need To Gather Our Resolve And, Carrying Only The Necessary Baggage, Step Off That Road Into Another Direction. If The New Choice Is Also Unpalatable, Without Embarrassment, We Must Be Ready To Change That As Well.

I Know Something Better Is On The Road For Me.

Something Better

The Poetry You Read Has Been Written For You, Each Of You - Black, White, Hispanic, Man, Woman, Gay, Straight.

Every Day You Should Reach Out And Touch Someone

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.

Every Day Offers You 10,000 Reasons To Cry, But If You Can Find Just One Reason To Laugh Then You Will Be All Right.

I Have A Son, Who Is My Heart. A Wonderful Young Man, Daring And Loving And Strong And Kind.

If One Is Lucky, A Solitary Fantasy Can Totally Transform One Million Realities.

When I Say 'i Am A Christian', I'm Not Shouting 'i'm Saved'. I'm Whispering 'i Get Lost'. That Is Why I Chose This Way.

Nathaniel Hawthorne Once Said That Easy Reading Is Damn Hard Writing.

I Love To See A Young Girl Go Out And Grab The World By The Lapels.

Love Is Like A Virus. It Can Happen To Anybody At Any Time.

Talent Is Like Electricity. We Don't Understand Electricity. We Use It.

It May In Fact Be Utterly Impossible To Be Successful Without Helping Others To Become Successful.

I Don't Trust Any Revolution Where Love Is Not Allowed.

Having Courage Does Not Mean We Are Unafraid.

The Truth Is You Never Can Leave Home. You Take It With You Everywhere You Go. It's Under Your Skin. It Moves The Tongue Or Slows It, Colors The Thinking, Impedes Upon The Logic.

I Read The Bible To Myself; I'll Take Any Translation, Any Edition, And Read It Aloud, Just To Hear The Language, Hear The Rhythm, And Remind Myself How Beautiful English Is.

My Son Is The Best Thing That Ever Happened To Me. And Through Me - To A Lot Of People.

Best Thing That Ever Happened To Me

I Find It Interesting That The Meanest Life, The Poorest Existence, Is Attributed To God's Will, But As Human Beings Become More Affluent, As Their Living Standard And Style Begin To Ascend The Material Scale, God Descends The Scale Of Responsibility At Commensurate Speed.

In All My Work, I Try To Say - 'you May Be Given A Load Of Sour Lemons, Why Not Try To Make A Dozen Lemon Meringue Pies?'

Because Of Technological Breakthroughs, The Society Will Need Fewer And Fewer Unskilled Laborers.

I Have Great Respect For The Past. If You Don't Know Where You've Come From, You Don't Know Where You're Going. I Have Respect For The Past, But I'm A Person Of The Moment. I'm Here, And I Do My Best To Be Completely Centered At The Place I'm At, Then I Go Forward To The Next Place.

No One Can Take The Place Of A Friend, No One.

Do Not Be Wedded Forever To Fear, Yoked Eternally To Brutishness.

I've Always Written. There's A Journal Which I Kept From About 9 Years Old. The Man Who Gave It To Me Lived Across The Street From The Store And Kept It When My Grandmother's Papers Were Destroyed. I'd Written Some Essays. I Loved Poetry, Still Do. But I Really, Really Loved It Then.

I Long For The Time When All Human History Is Taught As One History, Because It Really Is.

All Of My History As An African-american Woman, As A Jewish Woman, As A Muslim Woman. I'm Bringing Everything I Ever Knew, And All The Stories I've Read - Everything Good, Strong, Kind And Powerful. I Bring It All With Me Into Every Situation, And I Will Not Allow My Life To Be Minimized By Anybody's Racism Or Sexism Or Ageism.

I Go To A Hotel And Try To Get There By 5:30 In The Morning. I Keep A Dictionary, A Thesaurus, A Bible, A Deck Of Playing Cards, A Bottle Of Sherry, And Stacks Of Yellow Sticky Pads. I Shut Myself In For Six, Seven Hours. I Have An Arrangement With The Hotel That No One May Go In My Room. After Three Or Four Months, They Might Slip Notes Under My Door Like, "dear Ms. Angelou, Please Let Us Change The Linens. We Think They Might Be Molding." It's Probably True. I Let Them In If They Promise Not To Touch Anything Other Then The Bed.

Dr. [martin Luther] King Was A Human Being. He Had A Sense Of Humor Which Was Wonderful.

Nothing Succeeds Like Success. Get A Little Success, And Then Just Get A Little More.

To Those Who Are Given Much, Much Is Expected.

You Can't Forgive Without Loving. And I Don't Mean Sentimentality. I Don't Mean Mush. I Mean Having Enough Courage To Stand Up And Say, 'i Forgive. I'm Finished With It.'

Alone, All Alone Nobody, But Nobody Can Make It Out Here Alone.

It's So Tedious Writing Cookbooks Or Writing The Recipes Because I've Never Been Much Of A Measurer. But To Write A Book, You Have To Measure Everything.

I Walk Into A Room Just As Cool As You Please, And To A Man, The Fellows Stand Or Fall Down On Their Knees.

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.

Something Made Greater By Ourselves And In Turn That Makes Us Greater.

I Am The Dream And The Hope Of The Slave

African American

Love Is That Condition In The Human Spirit So Profound That It Allows Me To Survive, And Better Than That, To Thrive With Passion, Compassion, And Style.

As Far As I Knew White Women Were Never Lonely, Except In Books. White Men Adored Them, Black Men Desired Them And Black Women Worked For Them.

Jealousy In Romance Is Like Salt In Food. A Little Can Enhance The Savor, But Too Much Can Spoil The Pleasure And, Under Certain Circumstances, Can Be Life-threatening.

We Need To Not Be In Denial About What We've Done, What We've Come Through. It Will Help Us If We All Do That.

I Think All Poems Are Commissioned. They Just Come To Me Without Somebody Outside Commissioning Them. The Idea Comes And I Will Live With Them 'til I Get It As Close To What I Mean. I've Never Been Totally Satisfied. I've Come Close A Few Times.

The Real Difficulty Is To Overcome How You Think About Yourself.

It Is Time For Parents To Teach Young People Early On That In Diversity There Is Beauty And There Is Strength.

Information Helps You To See That You're Not Alone. That There's Somebody In Mississippi And Somebody In Tokyo Who Have Wept, Who've All Longed And Lost, Who've All Been Happy. So The Library Helps You To See, Not Only That You Are Not Alone, But That You're Not Really Any Different From Everyone Else.

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.

The Music Was My Friend, My Lover, My Family.

All Men Are Prepared To Accomplish The Incredible If Their Ideals Are Threatened.

People Have To Feel Needed. Frequently, We Just Offer A Job And 'perks.' We Don't Always Offer People A Purpose. When People Feel There Is A Purpose And That They're Needed, There's Not Much Else To Do Except Let Them Do The Work.

The Holy Spirit Upon My Left Leads My Feet Without Ceasing Into The Camp Of The Righteous And Into The Tents Of The Free.

I Think A Number Of The Leaders Are, Whether You Like It Or Not, In The Hip-hop Generation. And When They Understand Enough, They'll Do Wonders. I Count On Them.

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

In The Fifties, You Have Your Beauty As A Treat. I Thought That Until I Hit The Sixties.in Your Sixties, Life Decides To Reward You With Certain Kinds Of Profound Appreciation, So That People Name Their Children And Schools And Libraries After You! And You Still Have Your Sexuality And Your Sensuality. If You Want Your Sexuality, You Still Have It.

Out Of The Huts Of History's Shame I Rise.

Without Willing It, I Had Gone From Being Ignorant Of Being Ignorant To Being Aware Of Being Aware. And The Worst Part Of My Awareness Was That I Didn't Know What I Was Aware Of. I Knew I Knew Very Little, But I Was Certain That The Things I Had Yet To Learn Wouldn't Be Taught To Me At George Washington High School.

You Have To Develop Ways So That You Can Take Up For Yourself, And Then You Take Up For Someone Else. And So Sooner Or Later, You Have Enough Courage To Really Stand Up For The Human Race And Say, 'i'm A Representative. '

We Delight In The Beauty Of The Butterfly, But Rarely Admit The Changes It Has Gone Through To Achieve That Beauty.

The Plague Of Racism Is Insidious, Entering Into Our Minds As Smoothly And Quietly And Invisibly As Floating Airborne Microbes Enter Into Our Bodies To Find Lifelong Purchase In Our Bloodstreams.

Courage Is The Most Important Of All The Virtues, Without It, You Can Practice No Other.

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