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I'm a descendant of someone bought and sold, and brought in 1619 in what was to become the United States.

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
Sold
Bought
Brought
United
Someone
Become
States
Descendant
Descendants

More quotes by Maya Angelou

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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.
Maya Angelou
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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.
Maya Angelou
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Always in the black spirituals there's that promise that things are going to be better, by and by.
Maya Angelou
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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.
Maya Angelou
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I'm a spring leaf trembling in anticipation.
Maya Angelou
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By no amount of agile exercising of a wistful imagination could my mother have been called lenient. Generous she was indulgent never. Kind, yes, permissive, never. In her world, people she accepted paddled their own canoes, pulled their own weight, put their own shoulders to their own plows and pushed like hell.
Maya Angelou
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First best is falling in love. Second best is being in love. Least best is falling out of love. But any of it is better than never having been in love.
Maya Angelou
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I have great respect for the past. If you don't know where you've come from, you don't know where you're going. I have respect for the past, but I'm a person of the moment. I'm here, and I do my best to be completely centered at the place I'm at, then I go forward to the next place.
Maya Angelou
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Reality has changed chameleonlike before my eyes so many times that I have learned, or am learning, to trust almost anything except what appears to be so.
Maya Angelou
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You never get over the fear of writing.
Maya Angelou
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This conference ? of, for and about women ? is, in itself, a rainbow in the clouds. When numerous women come together and show that they care, not only for themselves but also for each other, that is the occasion when a rainbow is shining down on somebody else.
Maya Angelou
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Nothing succeeds like success. Get a little success, and then just get a little more.
Maya Angelou
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Love builds up the broken wall and straightens the crooked path. Love keeps the stars in the firmament and imposes rhythm on the ocean tides. Each of us is created of it and I suspect each of us was created for it.
Maya Angelou
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Elimination of illiteracy is as serious an issue to our history as the abolition of slavery.
Maya Angelou
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Poetry gave me back my voice.
Maya Angelou
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Strong women- precious jewels all- their humanness is evident in their accessibility. We are able to enter into the spirit of these women and rejoice in their warmth and courage.
Maya Angelou
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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.
Maya Angelou
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I work very hard, and I play very hard. I'm grateful for life. And I live it - I believe life loves the liver of it. I live it.
Maya Angelou
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Forgive yourself - no one else will.
Maya Angelou
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Courage, I don't think anybody is born with courage. I think you may be born with a flair to braggadocio, you know. That's not courage.
Maya Angelou