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We really are 15 countries, and it's remarkable that each of us thinks we represent the real America. The Midwesterner in Kansas, the black American in Durham - both are certain they are the real American.

Maya Angelou

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Maya Angelou
Age: 86 †
Born: 1928
Born: April 4
Died: 2014
Died: May 28
Author
Autobiographer
Comedian
Dancer
Essayist
Film Director
Film Producer
Human Rights Activist
Journalist
Novelist
Playwright
Politician
St. Louis
Missouri
Marguerite Annie Johnson
Marguerite Johnson
Marguerite Ann Johnson
Marguerite Anne Johnson
Certain
Diversity
America
Thinks
Country
Countries
Midwesterner
Real
Atheism
Midwesterners
Really
Justice
Durham
Thinking
American
Kansas
Culture
Represent
Black
Remarkable

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I want to be a good human being. I'm doing my best, and I'm working at it.
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Alone, all alone Nobody, but nobody Can make it out here alone.
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The first thing I do in the morning when I awaken is say, 'Thank you, Lord!' I'm grateful to be alive, and I'm going to try to tell the truth as well as I know and tell it as eloquently as I can so that people can hear it.
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I agreed a long time ago, I would not live at any cost. If I am moved or forced away from what I think is the right thing, I will not do it.
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Some people cannot see a good thing when it is right here, right now. Others can sense a good thing coming when it is days, months, or miles away.
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Martin Luther King was a human being with a brilliant mind, a powerful heart, and insight, and courage and also with a sense of humor. So he was accessible.
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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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We need Joy as we need air. We need Love as we need water. We need each other as we need the earth we share.
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I have respect for the past, but I'm a person of the moment.
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I do like to have guns around. I don't like to carry them. But I like - if somebody is going to come into my house and I have not put out the welcome mat, I want to stop them.
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My grandmother told me that every good thing I do helps some human being in the world. I believed her 50 years ago and still do.
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It is impossible to struggle for civil rights, equal rights for blacks, without including whites. Because equal rights, fair play, justice, are all like the air: we all have it, or none of us has it. That is the truth of it.
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My work is to be honest. My work is to try to think clearly, then have the courage to make sure that what I say is the truth.
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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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I am the dream and the hope of the slave
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You think you may not be heard. Speak anyway.
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I am convinced that words are things, and we simply don't have the machinery to measure what they are. I believe that words are tangible things.
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In a long meter hymn, a singer - they call it 'lays out a line.' And then the whole church joins in in repeating that line. And they form a wall of harmony so tight, you can't wedge a pin between it.
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The plague of racism is insidious, entering into our minds as smoothly and quietly and invisibly as floating airborne microbes enter into our bodies to find lifelong purchase in our bloodstreams.
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I find in my poetry and prose the rhythms and imagery of the best - I mean, when I'm at my best - of the good Southern black preachers. The lyricism of the spirituals and the directness of gospel songs and the mystery of blues are in my music or in my poetry and prose, or I missed everything.
Maya Angelou