Maya Angelou

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

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

Men fear death, as children fear to go in the dark and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other.

Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told, 'I'm with you kid. Let's go.'

The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are intelligence and necessity when unblunted by formal education.

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.

My life has been one great big joke A dance that's walked A song that's spoke, I laugh so hard I almost choke When I think about myself.

I answer the heroic question 'Death, where is thy sting' with 'It is here in my heart and mind and memories.'

While the rest of the world has been improving technology, Ghana has been improving the quality of man's humanity to man.

In order to be profoundly dishonest, a person must have one of two qualities either he is unscrupulously ambitious, or he is unswervingly egocentric.

There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside of you.

Without courage you cannot practice any of the other virtues.

Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.

Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.

We really are 15 countries, and it's really remarkable that each of us thinks we represent the real America. The Midwesterner in Kansas, the black American in Durham -- both are certain they are the real American.

For Africa to me is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place.

I know why the caged bird sings.

The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind.

Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.

History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, however, if faced with courage, need not be lived again.