Maya Angelou

We need much less than we think we need.

The sadness of the women’s movement is that they don’t allow the necessity of love. See, I don’t personally trust any revolution where love is not allowed.

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.

If you are always trying to be normal you will never know how amazing you can be.

If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform a million realities.

I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.

A great man stands on God. A small man on a great man.

What you seek in vain for, half your life, one day you come full upon, all the family at dinner. You seek it like a dream, and as soon as you find it, you become its prey.

To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.

There are several good protections against temptation, but the surest is cowardice.

The State must follow, and not lead, the character and progress of the citizen.

Nature magically suits a man to his fortunes, by making them the fruit of his character.

A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.

If you must hold yourself up to your children as an object lesson, hold yourself up as a warning and not an example.

Strength doesn’t come from what you can do. It comes from overcoming the things you once thought you couldn’t.

Strivers achieve what dreamers believe.

There is this benefit in brag, that the speaker is unconsciously expressing his own ideal. Humor him by all means; draw it all out, and hold him to it.

The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.

It is proved…that things cannot be other than they are, for since everything was made for a purpose, it follows that everything is made for the best purpose.

In every great time there is some one idea at work which is more powerful than any other, and which shapes the events of the time and determines their ultimate issues.

The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.