Maya Angelou Quotes

• How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!

• 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.

• If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude. Don't complain.

• The main thing in one's own private world is to try to laugh as much as you cry.

• A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.

• If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded.

• If you have only one smile in you, give it to the people you love. Don't be surly at home, then go out in the street and start grinning 'Good morning' at total strangers.

• Maya Angelou's autobiography borrows the first line of this poem by Harlem Renaissance poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar, "Sympathy":
I know why the caged bird sings, ah me, When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,When he beats his bars and he would be free;It is not a carol of joy or glee,But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core.