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When I Want To Think About What Would Be The Right Thing To Do, The Fair Thing To Do, The Wise Thing To Do, I Can Just Think Of My Grandmother. I Can Always Hear Her Say, "now Sister, You Know What's Right. Just Do Right!"

-Maya Angelou

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When I Want To

Maya Angelou

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When I Want To Think About What Would Be The Right Thing To Do, The Fair Thing To Do, The Wise Thing To Do, I Can Just Think Of My Grandmother. I Can Always Hear Her Say, "now Sister, You Know What's Right. Just Do Right!"

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Each Of Us Has A Responsibility For Being Alive: One Responsibility To Creation, Of Which We Are A Part, Another To The Creator A Debt We Repay By Trying To Extend Our Areas Of Comprehension.

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You Can't Use Up Creativity, Creative Thinking Builds On Itself And Increases The Creativity Of The Thinker...you Can't Use Up Creativity. The More You Use, The More You Have.

You Are The Sum Total Of Everything You've Ever Seen, Heard, Eaten, Smelled, Been Told, Forgot - It's All There. Everything Influences Each Of Us, And Because Of That I Try To Make Sure That My Experiences Are Positive.

Timidity Makes A Person Modest. It Makes Him Or Her Say, "i'm Not Worthy Of Being Written Up In The Record Of Deeds In Heaven Or On Earth." Timidity Keeps People From Their Good. They Are Afraid To Say, "yes, I Deserve It."

All My Work, My Life, Everything I Do Is About Survival, Not Just Bare, Awful, Plodding Survival, But Survival With Grace And Faith. While One May Encounter Many Defeats, One Must Not Be Defeated.

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Joy Is A Freedom. It Helps A Person To Find His/her Own Liberation. The Person Who Is Joyous Takes Responsibility For The Time He/she Takes Up And The Space That He/she Occupies. You Share It! Some Of You Have It ... You Share It! That Is What Joy Is! When You Continue To Give It Away You Will Still Have So Much More Of It.

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It Is This Belief In A Power Larger Than Myself And Other Than Myself Which Allows Me To Venture Into The Unknown And Even The Unknowable.

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Inspirational Life

My Mother Said I Must Always Be Intolerant Of Ignorance But Understanding Of Illiteracy.

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We Must Be Warriors In The Struggle Against Ignorance

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To Be Human Is To Be Challenged To Be More Divine. Not Even To Try To Meet Such A Challenge Is The Biggest Defeat Imaginable.

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Jealousy Is Conceived Only In Insecurity And Must Be Nourished In Fear.

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.

Life Loves The Liver Of It. You Must Live And Life Will Be Good To You.

I Wrote Some Of The Worst Poetry West From The Mississippi River, But I Wrote. And I Finally Sometimes Got It Right.

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History, Despite Its Wrenching Pain, Cannot Be Unlived, But If Faced With Courage, Need Not Be Lived Again.

I Think The More We Know The Better We Are. I Mean Not Just Facts. The More We Know About Each Other, The Closer We Are To Learn Something About Our Selves.

Human Beings Are More Alike Than Unalike. Whether In Paris, Texas, Or Paris, France, We All Want To Have Good Jobs Where We Are Needed And Respected And Paid Just A Little More Than We Deserve. We Want Healthy Children, Safe Streets, To Be Loved And Have The Unmitigated Gall To Accept Love. If We Are Religious, We Want A Place To Perpetuate God. If Not, We Want A Good Lecture Every Once In A While. And Everyone Wants Someplace To Party On Saturday Nights.

Poetry Helps My Soul Escape Its Encasement.

Life Sometimes Gives You A Second Chance.

I Keep Hitting The Escape Button But I Am Still Here!

While The Rest Of The World Has Been Improving Technology, Ghana Has Been Improving The Quality Of Man's Humanity To Man.

Y’all Dropped The Ball And You Should Be Shamed.

In Diversity There Is Beauty And There Is Strength.

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.

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.

It Is The Worst Thing You Can Do, Women, Is Whine, .. I Mean The Worst. Don't Complain, Protest.

Effective Action Is Always Unjust.

I've Tried To Be Totally Present, So That When I'm Finished With A Piece Of Work, I'm Finished. ... The Work, Once Completed, Does Not Need Me. The Work I'm Working On Needs My Total Concentration. The One That's Finished Doesn't Belong To Me Anymore. It Belongs To Itself.

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Those Who Have Something To Say Accept The Fact That That's Lonely. One Already Knows That There Will Be Adversaries.

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Positive Attitude

To Take A Few Nouns, And A Few Pronouns, And Adverbs And Adjectives, And Put Them Together, Ball Them Up, And Throw Them Against The Wall To Make Them Bounce. That's What Norman Mailer Did. That's What James Baldwin Did, And Joan Didion Did, And That's What I Do - That's What I Mean To Do.

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

I'm A Feminist. I've Been A Female For A Long Time Now. It'd Be Stupid Not To Be On My Own Side.

I Don't Know If I Continue, Even Today, Always Liking Myself. But What I Learned To Do Many Years Ago Was To Forgive Myself. It Is Very Important For Every Human Being To Forgive Herself Or Himself Because If You Live, You Will Make Mistakes - It Is Inevitable. But Once You Do And You See The Mistake, Then You Forgive Yourself And Say, 'well, If I'd Known Better I'd Have Done Better,' That's All.

I Love A Statement By The Apostle Paul, In The Book Of Philippians In The Bible. I Think The Corinthians Had Been Writing To Paul, Telling Him That Old Men Were Chasing Young Women, Nobody Was Tithing - And All That Must Have Run Paul Crazy. He Wrote Back And Said, "if There Be Anything Of Good Report, Speak Of These Things." That's One Of My Principles.it's Another Discipline That I Encourage Myself To Employ - To, As Much As Possible, Say The Courteous Thing, And Then Be It.

I Have Risked Everything To Tell The Truth. Tell The Truth

Telling The Truth

We Are Not Our Brother’s Keeper We Are Our Brother And We Are Our Sister. We Must Look Past Complexion And See Community.

I Like To Go Back And Read Poems That I Wrote Fifty Years Ago, Twenty Years Ago, And Sometimes They Surprise Me - I Didn't Know I Knew That Then. Or Maybe I Didn't Know It Then, And I Know More Now.

I Believe That A Negative Statement Is Poison.i'm Convinced That The Negative Has Power. It Lives. And If You Allow It To Perch In Your House, In Your Mind, In Your Life, It Can Take You Over. So When The Rude Or Cruel Thing Is Said - The Lambasting, The Gay Bashing, The Hate - I Say, "take It All Out Of My House!" Those Negative Words Climb Into The Woodwork And Into The Furniture, And The Next Thing You Know They'll Be On My Skin.

If You Will Have A Person Enslaved, The First Thing You Must Do Is Convince Yourself That The Person Is Subhuman. The Second Thing You Have To Do Is Convince Your Allies So You'll Have Some Help, And The Third And Probably Unkindest Cut Of All Is To Convince That Person That He Or She Is Subhuman And Deserves It.

Courage - You Develop Courage By Doing Small Things Like Just As If You Wouldn't Want To Pick Up A 100-pound Weight Without Preparing Yourself.

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That's The Biggest Gift I Can Give Anybody: 'wake Up, Be Aware Of Who You Are, What You're Doing And What You Can Do To Prevent Yourself From Becoming Ill.'

Hate, It Has Caused A Lot Of Problems In The World, But Has Not Solved One Yet.

One Of The Problems We Have As Writers Is We Don't Take Ourselves Seriously While Writing; Being Serious Is Setting Aside A Time And Saying If It Comes, Good; If It Doesn't Come, Good, I'll Just Sit Here.

Growing Up At My Grandmother's Table, She Always Had Rice. She Might Do Something As Exotic As Potatoes Or Spaghetti, But There Was Still Always Rice, Just In Case You Needed A Little Rice Fix.

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.

A Rose By Any Other Name May Smell As Sweet, But A Woman Called By A Devaluing Name Will Only Be Weakened By The Misnomer.

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?".

When Asked How She Knows When Her Writing Is Where She Wants It To Be: "i Know When It's The Best I Can Do. It May Not Be The Best There Is. Another Writer May Do It Much Better. But I Know When It's The Best I Can Do. I Know That One Of The Great Arts That The Writer Develops Is The Art Of Saying, 'no. No, I'm Finished. Bye.' And Leaving It Alone. I Will Not Write It Into The Ground. I Will Not Write The Life Out Of It. I Won't Do That."

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

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.

It's Good To Remember That In Crises, Natural Crises, Human Beings Forget For Awhile Their Ignorances, Their Biases, Their Prejudices. For A Little While, Neighbors Help Neighbors And Strangers Help Strangers.

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

No One Has Ever Become Poor From Giving.

Nothing Hurts More Than Realizing They Meant Everything To You, But You Meant Nothing To Them.

The Most Noble Cause Known To Man Is The Liberation Of The Human Mind And Spirit.

Our Stories Come From Our Lives And From The Playwright's Pen, The Mind Of The Actor, The Roles We Create, The Artistry Of Life Itself And The Quest For Peace.

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.

I Have Forgiven Myself; I'll Make A Change. Once That Forgiveness Has Taken Place You Can Console Yourself With The Knowledge That A Diamond Is The Result Of Extreme Pressure. Less Pressure Is Crystal, Less Than That Is Coal, Less Than That Is Fossilized Leaves Or Plain Dirt. Pressure Can Change You Into Something Quite Precious, Quite Wonderful, Quote Beautiful And Extremely Hard.

There Is An Amazing Something In The American Psyche Which Speaks About Courage, And It Says, 'yes I Can,' ... Yes, We Will Overcome It All Because We Have The Spirit To Do So.

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.

I've Lived Many Places On The Planet, And I Still Have Friends In Many Places.

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

I'm A Spring Leaf Trembling In Anticipation.

We Are Not Just Flesh And Blood. And Our Hungers Are Not Going To Be Set Aside As Just Flesh And Blood.

Flesh And Blood

The Quality Of Strength Lined With Tenderness Is An Unbeatable Combination, As Are Intelligence And Necessity When Unblunted By Formal Education.

What Is A Fear Of Living? It's Being Preeminently Afraid Of Dying. It Is Not Doing What You Came Here To Do, Out Of Timidity And Spinelessness. The Antidote Is To Take Full Responsibility For Yourself - For The Time You Take Up And The Space You Occupy. If You Don't Know What You're Here To Do, Then Just Do Some Good.

When You Wish Someone Joy, You Wish Them Peace, Love, Prosperity, Happiness... All The Good Things.

Develop Enough Courage So That You Can Stand Up For Yourself And Then Stand Up For Somebody Else.

Since Time Is The One Immaterial Object Which We Cannot Influence - Neither Speed Up Nor Slow Down, Add To Nor Diminish - It Is An Imponderably Valuable Gift. Each Of Us Has A Few Minutes A Day Or A Few Hours A Week Which We Could Donate To An Old Folks Home Or A Children's Hospital Ward. The Elderly Whose Pillows We Plump Or Whose Water Pitchers We Refill May Or May Not Thank Us For Our Gift, But The Gift Is Upholding The Foundation Of The Universe.

No One Has Ever Become Poor From Giving.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Horizon Leans Forward, Offering You Space To Place New Steps Of Change.

My Life Has Been Long, And Believing That Life Loves The Liver Of It, I Have Dared To Try Many Things, Sometimes Trembling, But Daring Still.

Being Physically Close To Extreme Power Causes One To Experience A Giddiness, An Intoxication.

Step Off The Road. Build Yourself A Brand New Path.

Be Courageous, But Not Foolhardy. Walk Proud As You Are.

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.

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

Mind Your Own Business

Hopes And Fears

Achievement Brings Its Own Anticlimax.

To Make A Difference Is Not A Matter Of Accident...people Choose To Make A Difference.

Making A Difference

Don't Face The Day Until You've Faced God.

Whining Lets The Brute Know There's A Victim For Him In The Neighborhood!

I'm A Religious Woman. And I Feel I Have Responsibility. I Have No Modesty At All. I'm Even Afraid Of It - It's A Learned Affectation And It's Just Stuck On Me Like Decals.

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.

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

When I Was Asked To Do Something Good, I Often Say Yes, I'll Try, Yes, I'll Do My Best. And Part Of That Is Believing, If God Loves Me, If God Made Everything From Leaves To Seals And Oak Trees, Then What Is It I Can't Do?

I've Learned That You Can Tell A Lot About A Person By The Way He/she Handles These Three Things: A Rainy Day, Lost Luggage And Tangled Christmas Tree Lights. I've Learned That Making A 'living' Is Not The Same Thing As 'making A Life'. I've Learned That Whenever I Decide Something With An Open Heart, I Usually Make The Right Decision. 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 Some Things Back.

As A Nurse, We Have The Opportunity To Heal The Heart, Mind, Soul And Body Of Our Patients, Their Families And Ourselves. They May Not Remember Your Name But They Will Never Forget The Way You Made Them Feel.

I Encourage You To Live With Life. Be Courageous, Adventurous. Give Us A Tomorrow, More Than We Deserve.

I Never Had That Feeling That I Had To Carry The Weight Of Somebody's Ignorance Around With Me. And That Was True For Racists Who Wanted To Use The 'n' Word When Talking About Me Or About My People, Or The Stupidity Of People Who Really Wanted To Belittle Other Folks Because They Weren't Pretty Or They Weren't Rich Or They Weren't Clever.

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 What Their Color.

Love Is Many Things. It Is Varied. One Thing Love Is Not, Is Unsure.

My Mother Is So Full Of Joy And Life. I Am Her Child. And That Is Better Than Being The Child Of Anyone Else In The World.

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.

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

Stepping Onto A Brand-new Path Is Difficult, But Not More Difficult Than Remaining In A Situation, Which Is Not Nurturing To The Whole Woman.

I Would Like To Be Known As An Intelligent Woman, A Courageous Woman, A Loving Woman, A Woman Who Teaches By Being.

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Julianna Baggott

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