Maya Angelou

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

All of childhood’s unanswered questions must finally be passed back to the town and answered there. Heroes and bogey men, values and dislikes, are first encountered and labeled in that early environment. In later years they change faces, places and maybe races, tactics, intensities and goals, but beneath those penetrable masks they wear forever the stocking-capped faces of childhood.

My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humour, and some style.

I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life’s a bitch. You’ve got to go out and kick ass.

Each of us has the right and the responsibility to asses the road which lie ahead and those over which we have traveled, and if the feature road looms ominous or unpromising, and the road back uninviting-inviting, 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 one as well.

Nature has no mercy at all. Nature says, I’m going to snow. If you have on a bikini and no snowshoes, that’s tough. I am going to snow anyway.

Never marry but for love; but see that thou lovest what is lovely.

The Pause; that impressive silence, that eloquent silence, that geometrically progressive silence which often achieves a desired effect where no combination of words, however so felicitous, could accomplish it.

You don’t create things, you discover things.

The first farmer was the first man. All historic nobility rests on the possession and use of land.

Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.

To hazard much to get much has more of avarice than wisdom.

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself; nothing, but the triumph of principles.

We lie in the lap of immense intelligence.

I could have become a soldier if I had waited; I knew more about retreating than the man who invented retreating.

A portion of mankind take pride in their vices and pursue their purpose; many more waver between doing what is right and complying with what is wrong.

Pessimism is only the name that men of weak nerve give to wisdom.

Know that the amount of criticism you receive may correlate somewhat to the amount of publicity you receive.

Achievement brings its own anticlimax.

I believe that every person is born with talent.

Thought makes every thing fit for use.