Courage - you develop courage by doing small things like just as if you wouldn't want to pick up a 100-pound weight without preparing yourself.

— Maya Angelou

Don't let the man bring you down.

— Maya Angelou

Each of us has the right and the responsibility to assess the roads which lie ahead, and those over which we have traveled, and if the future road looms ominous or unpromising, and the roads back uninviting, then we need to gather our resolve and, carrying only the necessary baggage, step off that road into another direction. If the new choice is also unpalatable, without embarrassment, we must be ready to change that as well.

— Maya Angelou

Each one of us has lived through some devastation, some loneliness, some weather superstore or spiritual superstore, when we look at each other we must say, I understand. I understand how you feel because I have been there myself. We must support each other and empathize with each other because each of us is more alike than we are unalike.

— Maya Angelou

Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for.

— Maya Angelou

Each time a woman stands up for herself, without knowing it possibly, without claiming it, she stands up for all women.

— Maya Angelou

Eating is so intimate. It's very sensual. When you invite someone to sit at your table, and you want to cook for them, you're inviting a person into your life.

— Maya Angelou

Elimination of illiteracy is as serious an issue to our history as the abolition of slavery.

— Maya Angelou

Every person needs to take one day away.  A day in which one consciously separates the past from the future.  Jobs, family, employers, and friends can exist one day without any one of us, and if our egos permit us to confess, they could exist eternally in our absence.  Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for.  Each of us needs to withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us.

— Maya Angelou

Every person under the sound of my voice is a soldier. You are either fighting for your freedom or betraying the fight for freedom or enlisted in the army to deny somebody else freedom.

— Maya Angelou