A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song. - (Angelou, Maya - Action)

I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life's a bitch. You've got to go out and kick ass. - (Angelou, Maya - Aggression)

Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean. - (Angelou, Maya - Anger)

The need for change bulldozed road down the center of my mind. - (Angelou, Maya - Change)

The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are intelligence and necessity when unblunted by formal education. - (Angelou, Maya - Character)

Of all the needs (there are none imaginary) a lonely child has, the one that must be satisfied, if there is going to be hope and a hope of wholeness, is the unshaken need for an unshakable God. - (Angelou, Maya - Children)

Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives. - (Angelou, Maya - Children)

All of childhood's unanswered questions must finally be passed back to the town and answered there. Heroes and bogey men, values and dislikes, are first encountered and labeled in that early environment. In later years they change faces, places and maybe races, tactics, intensities and goals, but beneath those penetrable masks they wear forever the stocking-capped faces of childhood. - (Angelou, Maya - Conditioning)

I believe we are still so innocent. The species are still so innocent that a person who is apt to be murdered believes that the murderer, just before he puts the final wrench on his throat, will have enough compassion to give him one sweet cup of water. - (Angelou, Maya - Credulity)

We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated. - (Angelou, Maya - Defeat)

Education helps one case cease being intimidated by strange situations. - (Angelou, Maya - Education)

The sadness of the women's movement is that they don't allow the necessity of love. See, I don't personally trust any revolution where love is not allowed. - (Angelou, Maya - Feminism)

I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God's will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at a commensurate speed. - (Angelou, Maya - God)

My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return. - (Angelou, Maya - Hope)

We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders. - (Angelou, Maya - Isolation)