Maya Angelou - In Loving Memory

Dr. Maya Angelou truly was and always will be one of our time's greatest "Renaissance Women" as told in her biography.

Today we don't mourn, but we celebrate her life and contributions as a celebrated poet, memoirist, novelist, educator, dramatist, producer, actress, historian, filmmaker, and civil rights activist.

Her light will be greatly missed, but her candle will forever burn in our hearts.  How lucky we and future generations are that we can savor her strength, beauty and free spirit through her legacy.

Enjoy a few of our most beloved quotes by Dr. Maya Angelou and please feel free to comment with your own favorites.

Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.

Maya Angelou

Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.

Maya Angelou

Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.

Maya Angelou

There’s a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.

Maya Angelou

As far as I knew white women were never lonely, except in books. White men adored them, Black men desired them and Black women worked for them.

Maya Angelou

I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.

Maya Angelou

There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.

Maya Angelou

The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.

Maya Angelou

There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.

Maya Angelou

How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!

Maya Angelou

At fifteen life had taught me undeniably that surrender, in its place, was as honorable as resistance, especially if one had no choice.

Maya Angelou

If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities.

Maya Angelou

While the rest of the world has been improving technology, Ghana has been improving the quality of man’s humanity to man.

Maya Angelou

Most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be otherwise.

Maya Angelou

Some critics will write ‘Maya Angelou is a natural writer’ – which is right after being a natural heart surgeon.

Maya Angelou

For Africa to me… is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place.

Maya Angelou