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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
Black
Remarkable
Certain
Diversity
America
Thinks
Country
Countries
Midwesterner
Real
Atheism
Midwesterners
Really
Justice
Durham
Thinking
American
Kansas
Culture
Represent

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Being free is being able to accept people for what they are, and not try to understand all they are or be what they are.
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Effective action is always unjust.
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I love wisdom. And you can never be great at anything unless you love it. Not be in love with it, but love the thing, admire the thing. And it seems that if you love the thing, and you don't just want to possess it, it will find you.
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Living a life is like constructing a building: if you start wrong, you'll end wrong.
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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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Human beings are more alike than unalike, and what is true anywhere is true everywhere, yet I encourage travel to as many destinations as possible for the sake of education as well as pleasure.
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I believed that there was a God because I was told it by my grandmother and later by other adults. But when I found that I knew not only that there was God but that I was a child of God, when I understood that, when I comprehended that, more than that, when I internalized that, ingested that, I became courageous.
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The black kids, the poor white kids, Spanish-speaking kids, and Asian kids in the US - in the face of everything to the contrary, they still bop and bump, shout and go to school somehow. Their optimism gives me hope.
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All great acheivements require time.
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Courage allows the successful woman to fail - and to learn powerful lessons from the failure - so that in the end, she didn't fail at all.
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When you do nothing you feel overwhelmed and powerless. But when you get involved you feel the sense of hope and accomplishment that comes from knowing you are working to make things better.
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Love is that condition in the human spirit so profound that it empowers us to develop courage to trust that courage and build bridges with it to trust those bridges and cross over them so we can attempt to reach each other.
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If the door has been opened and I've been invited, or if I'm not invited and I somehow know I'm supposed to go in there, I put myself together and go in, praying all the while. I try to learn something before I go in. I try to show some respect of the place I'm going into.
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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. Don't complain.
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At our best, we're all teachers
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In order to be a mentor, and an effective one, one must care. You must care. You don't have to know how many square miles are in Idaho, you don't need to know what is the chemical makeup of chemistry, or of blood or water. Know what you know and care about the person, care about what you know and care about the person you're sharing with.
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I think I know that I deserve better. And so I try for better. I'm never so put off that I would ever walk out of a place not having tried the best I could.
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There is an intimate laughter to be found only among friends
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If I'm here, I'll be trying to be a better human being, a better writer, a better friend and a better beloved.
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