100 Maya Angelou Quotes About Life, Love, And Success
Maya Angelou wasn’t just a poet — she was a force of nature. A woman who survived childhood trauma, worked as a streetcar conductor at sixteen, became a single mother, danced in nightclubs, edited newspapers in Africa, and went on to recite a poem at a presidential inauguration. If anyone earned the right to speak about life, love, and success, it was her.
Her words don’t just sit on a page — they rise. They challenge you to stand taller, love harder, and refuse to be defined by anything less than your own truth. I’ve gathered 100 of her most powerful quotes, organized by theme, because some days you need a reminder that you are phenomenal — and who better to remind you than Maya herself?
Maya Angelou on Life
Life, in Maya Angelou’s words, was never simple — but it was always worth living. These quotes capture her fierce determination and quiet wisdom.
- “Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told, ‘I’m with you kid. Let’s go.’”
- “My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.”
- “You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.”
- “If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.”
- “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
- “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”
- “Nothing will work unless you do.”
- “I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.”
- “Life loves the liver of it.”
- “We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.”
- “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
- “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
- “You alone are enough. You have nothing to prove to anybody.”
- “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.”
- “The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are intelligence plus need for excellence.”
Maya Angelou on Love
Maya Angelou wrote about love the way she lived it — openly, bravely, and without apology. These quotes are the ones you come back to when you need to remember what love really looks like.
- “Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.”
- “Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.”
- “I’ve learned that you shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back.”
- “Love is that condition in the human spirit so profound that it empowers us to develop courage.”
- “The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for.”
- “To love someone means to see him as God intended him.”
- “We need much less than we think we need.”
- “Love is an endless act of forgiveness. Forgiveness is the key to action and to freedom.”
- “I am grateful to have been loved and to have loved others.”
- “Love liberates. It doesn’t just hold — it liberates.”
- “Loving someone liberates you, because you realize that you are not bound to anyone but to your own spirit.”
- “One loves you enough to let you go, and another loves you enough to let you fly.”
- “Ask for what you want and be prepared to get it.”
- “There is nothing more frightening than love that has no name — the kind that you carry with no explanation.”
- “The most called-upon prerequisite of a friend is an accessible ear.”
- “Let gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer.”
- “In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics I write, the poems I write, the point is to encourage people to believe in love.”
- “The desire to reach for the stars is ambitious. The desire to reach hearts is wise.”
- “If we lose love and self-respect for each other, this is why we finally die.”
- “Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.”
Maya Angelou on Courage and Resilience
Courage was Maya Angelou’s middle name — metaphorically speaking. She wrote about it with the authority of someone who had faced the worst and kept going.
- “Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can’t practice any other virtue consistently.”
- “You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated.”
- “I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.”
- “You may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lies, you may trod me in the very dirt, but still, like dust, I’ll rise.”
- “What is a fear of living? It’s being preeminently afraid of dying. It is not doing what you came here to do, out of timidity and spinelessness.”
- “We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.”
- “Courage — you develop courage by doing small things just as if you wanted to be a weightlifter, you lift a small weight and then a bigger one.”
- “It’s one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive. Forgive everybody.”
- “I believe that every person is born with talent.”
- “Hoping for the best, prepared for the worst, and unsurprised by anything in between.”
- “Try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud.”
- “Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.”
- “If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities.”
- “You can ask forgiveness of others, but in the end the real forgiveness is in one’s own self.”
- “Stepping onto a brand-new path is difficult, but not more difficult than remaining in a situation which is not nurturing to the whole woman.”
Maya Angelou on Success
Success, for Maya Angelou, was never about money or fame. It was about self-respect, purpose, and the courage to be authentically yourself.
- “Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.”
- “You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.”
- “Nothing succeeds like success.”
- “To get the full value of joy you must have someone to divide it with.”
- “I’ve learned that making a living is not the same thing as making a life.”
- “Ambition and determination are the keys to success.”
- “If you want a thing, well, go get it. Period.”
- “Be certain that you do not die without having done something wonderful for humanity.”
- “Whining is just ungrateful raising of hell. It’s neither prayer nor praise.”
- “The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.”
- “I’ve learned that even when I have pains, I don’t have to be one.”
- “When you learn, teach. When you get, give.”
- “Whatever you want to do, if you want to be great at it, you have to love it and be able to make sacrifices for it.”
- “I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.”
- “It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.”
- “We are only as blind as we want to be.”
- “One day the world will wake up and find that you were its dream all along.”
- “My wish for you is that you continue. Continue to be who and how you are, to astonish a mean world with your acts of kindness.”
- “I am convinced that the fear of being embarrassed or of looking foolish is what holds most of us back from living our best lives.”
- “Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future, and renders the present inaccessible.”
Maya Angelou on Identity and Self-Worth
Perhaps her greatest gift was teaching people — especially women and people of color — to love themselves fiercely and unapologetically.
- “Phenomenal woman, that’s me.”
- “I am a woman phenomenally. Phenomenal woman, that’s me.”
- “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
- “You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.”
- “A wise woman wishes to be no one’s enemy; a wise woman refuses to be anyone’s victim.”
- “I am not what happened to me. I am what I choose to become.”
- “I would like to be known as an intelligent woman, a courageous woman, a loving woman, a woman who teaches by being.”
- “I am a human being. Nothing human can be alien to me.”
- “Stand up straight and realize who you are, that you tower over your circumstances.”
- “You are the sum total of everything you’ve ever seen, heard, eaten, smelled, been told, forgot — it’s all there.”
- “I’ve learned that you shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands.”
- “Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope.”
- “The desire to reach for the stars is ambitious. The desire to reach hearts is wise.”
- “Don’t let man make his shadow over you.”
- “At the end of the day people won’t remember what you said or did, they will remember how you made them feel.”
- “If you are always trying to be normal you will never know how amazing you can be.”
- “You may shoot me with your words, you may cut me with your eyes, you may kill me with your hatefulness, but still, like air, I’ll rise.”
- “I am not afraid of storms for I am learning how to sail my ship.”
- “My work has been my saving grace. God gave me some gifts and I’m grateful.”
- “Determine to live your life. Be not gotten all consumed by systems.”
Maya Angelou’s Words That Changed the World
These are the quotes that transcended poetry and became mantras for millions of people.
- “Still I Rise.”
- “When you know better, you do better.”
- “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
- “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
- “If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.”
- “Try to be a rainbow in someone else’s cloud.”
- “We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike.”
- “You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.”
- “My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive.”
- “Love recognizes no barriers.”
Maya Angelou left this world in 2014, but her words have only grown louder since. They show up in graduation speeches, on Instagram bios, in journal entries, and in the quiet moments when you need someone to remind you that you are enough.
What made Maya Angelou different from other writers and thinkers was her honesty. She didn’t preach from a pedestal — she spoke from experience. From pain. From joy. From a life lived fully, messily, and bravely.
If even one of these quotes landed somewhere deep inside you today, then Maya did her job. And now it’s your turn — take her words, live them, and pass them on.
Which Maya Angelou quote has meant the most to you? Is there one that you come back to again and again? I’d love to know which words of hers have shaped your life.