"It is sad but true that sometimes we need the tragedy to help us to see how human we are and how we are more alike than we are different."
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Quote collection
Maya Angelou quotes (page 17 of 51)
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"Dare to let your dreams reach beyond you..."
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"Take the blinders from your vision take the padding from your ears and confess you've heard me crying and admit you've seen my tears."
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"I encourage courtesy. To accept nothing less than courtesy, and to give nothing less than courtesy. If we accept being talked to any kind of a way, then we are telling ourselves we are not quite worth the best. And if we have the effrontery to talk to anybody with less than courtesy, we tell ourselves and the world we are not very intelligent."
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"If it is true that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, isn't it also true a society is only as healthy as its sickest citizen and only as wealthy as its most deprived?"
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"There were people who went to sleep last night, poor and rich and white and black, but they will never wake again. And those dead folks would give anything at all for just five minutes of this weather or ten minutes of plowing. So you watch yourself about complaining. What you're supposed to do when you don't like a thing is change it. If you can't change it, change the way you think about it."
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"I've learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision."
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"Life is going to give you just what you put in it. Put your whole heart in everything you do, and pray, then you can wait."
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"Now, after years of observation and enough courage to admit what I have observed, I try to plant peace if I do not want discord; to plant loyalty and honesty if I want to avoid betrayal and lies."
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"I've learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you'll miss them when they're gone from your life."
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"Creativity or talent, like electricity, is something I don’t understand but something I’m able to harness and use. While electricity remains a mystery, I know I can plug into it and light up a cathedral or a synagogue or an operating room and use it to help save a life. Or I can use it to electrocute someone. Like electricity, creativity makes no judgment. I can use it productively or destructively. The important thing is to use it. You can’t use up creativity. The more you use it, the more you have."
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"Remember this: When you cross my doorstep, you have already been raised. With what you have learned...you know the difference between right and wrong. Do right. Don't anybody raise you from the way you have been raised. Know you will have to make adaptations, in love, in relationships, in friends, in society, in work, but don't let anybody change your mind."
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"Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: 'I'm with you kid. Let's go.'"
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"In order to win, we pay with energy and effort and discipline. If we lose, we pay in disappointment, discontent, and lack of fulfillment."
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"Of all the needs (there are none imaginary) a lonely child has, the one that must be satisfied, if there is going to be hope and a hope of wholeness, is the unshaking need for an unshakable God. My pretty Black brother was my Kingdom Come."
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"Love liberates. Love - not sentimentality, not mush - but true love gives you enough courage that you can say to somebody, "Don't do that, baby." And the person will know you're not preaching but teaching."
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"I love a Hebrew National hot dog with an ice-cold Corona - no lime. If the phone rings, I won't answer until I'm done."
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"Money and power can liberate only if they are used to do so. They can imprison and inhibit more finally than barred windows and iron chains."
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"I not only have the right to stand up for myself, but I have the responsibility. I can't ask somebody else to stand up for me if I won't stand up for myself. And once you stand up for yourself, you'd be surprised that people say, "Can I be of help?"."
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"In all my work, I try to say - 'You may be given a load of sour lemons, why not try to make a dozen lemon meringue pies?'"
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