Maya Angelou

Out of the huts of history's shame, I rise. Up from a past that's rooted in pain, I rise.

Just like moons and like suns, with the certainty of tides, just like hopes springing high, still I'll rise.

I know that when I make a mistake, it doesn't mean that I'm a mistake.

The only way to change is to be a revolutionary.

I got my own back.

To describe simply one of the characteristics of a woman who claims to be a poet: she is a woman who is at home in the world.

Life is going to give you just about what you put into it.

I have learned to accept my anger and to embrace it as part of my strength.

Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage, you can't practice any other virtue consistently.

The desire to know your own history is so powerful. To know your own story, to know where you came from, to know what your people did.

I've learned that making a 'living' is not the same thing as 'making a life'.

The quality of strength is not the ability to do five hundred push-ups. It's the ability to get back up after being knocked down.

Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.

We need to feel that we are not alone. We need to feel that we are part of something larger than ourselves.

The more you know of your history, the more you know where you are going.

I speak to the black experience, but I am always talking about the human experience.

Still I Rise.

The human heart is not a machine. It is a garden.

The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.

Each time a woman stands up for herself, without knowing it possibly, without claiming it, she stands up for all women.