Quote maya angelou free#

The next decade, she found success as a performer, starring in a touring production of Porgy and Bess, as well as off-Broadway’s Calypso Heat Wave in 1957 and releasing an album Miss Calypso the same year. As retaliation, her uncles killed her perpetrator, scarring the young girl to the point that she didn’t speak for about five years.Įventually, she moved out west and started carving out her own path - becoming the first African American cable car conductor in San Francisco in the 1940s. There, she faced discrimination - and was raped by her mother’s boyfriend at the age of seven.

Louis, Missouri, Angelou had a traumatic childhood after her family moved to Arkansas. I'm following in somebody's footsteps.Maya Angelou made her mark in literary history by writing the first nonfiction bestseller by an African American woman: her 1969 memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.īut that wasn’t her only first - or even her first one.īorn April 4, 1928, in St. 'Humility is great, because humility says, 'There was someone before me. And in this 2013 interview with Oprah, she acknowledged the importance of humility in her life: On Humility Even though she was a font of wisdom and had more than 70 honorary degrees, Angelou always considered herself to be constantly learning. And now I’m doing a pretty good job, you know.' I feel that - I really have felt almost my life that I wouldn’t live long.

Quote maya angelou free#

Angelou's reply is a reminder that freedom is always worth it: 'Well, at some point - you only are free when you realize you belong no place - you belong every place - no place at all.

And he wanted to know if there was a price for that freedom.

'You’ve really been a mobile, nomadic, free person,' said Moyers. In a 1973 interview, journalist Bill Moyers pointed out to Angelou that she'd become a world citizen and couldn't be put into a box. Maya Angelou during an interview in 1978. Do we like what we see in the mirror? And, according to our light, according to our understanding, according to our courage, we will have to say yea or nay - and rise!' On Looking in the Mirror : In that same interview, Mother Jones asked Angelou 'How can progressives take back the political agenda?' Angelou's answer is relevant to both political and personal change. And it’s gonna keep getting better, according to how we put our courage forward, and thrust our hearts forth.' Then they compute: 'You mean the life and death and work of Malcolm X and Martin King, the Kennedys, Medgar Evers, Fannie Lou Hamer, the life and struggle of Rosa Parks - they did all that and nothing has changed? Well then, what the hell am I doing? There’s no point for me to do anything.' The truth is, a lot has changed–for the good. Because if we say so, we tell young people, implicitly or explicitly, that there can be no change. 'We’ve made a lot of progress - it’s dangerous not to say so. Her reply is a reminder to not let the current state of the world demoralize us - because the kids are watching and listening: In an interview in 1995, asked Angelou if she thought, given America's many problems, if the nation had made any progress since the Civil Rights activism of the 1960's. You can’t be consistently fair or kind or generous or forgiving any of those without courage.' DuBois in Ghana and what she learned from his example: 'Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can’t practice any other virtue consistently. The topic came up during one of her last interviews before her death when she told On Being about her time meeting W.E.B. On Courage: Although self-love is an ongoing theme through Angelou's work, courage was the personal quality she perhaps admired most. 'I'm blessed to be excited everyday, because this is a day I've never seen before.'

In the years before her passing, Angelou kept active giving speeches and interviews and writing - she was even on Twitter! Angelou dropped 140-character bits of wisdom on her followers, like this reminder from 2010 that might come in handy on those days when you're in a funk and can't seem to get out of bed: Today, on what would have been her 90th birthday, here are a few of our favorites: Angelou also gave us reams of quotable wisdom and inspiration. How much do we miss Maya Angelou - her storytelling, her resilience, her jokes, her words of encouragement? Her honesty and wit?Įven though the legendary writer, poet, and civil rights activist passed away in May 2014, her legacy lives on - through her many novels and collections of poetry, and in the many video clips of her interviews and speeches that are available online.