Maya Angelou Quotes About Children

• I believed that there was a God because I was told it by my grandmother and later by other adults. But when I found that I knew not only that there was God but that I was a child of God, when I understood that, when I comprehended that, more than that, when I internalized that, ingested that, I became courageous.

  Maya Angelou

  Faith, God, Christian

  "Maya Angelou discusses her faith, politics, courage ahead of LSU event next week". Interview with Chelsea Brasted, www.nola.com. February 13, 2013.

• When you know better you do better.

  Maya Angelou

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

• There's a place in you that you must keep inviolate. You must keep it pristine. Clean. So that nobody has a right to curse you or treat you badly. Nobody. No mother, father, no wife, no husband, no­­­-nobody. You have to have a place where you say: 'Stop it. Back up. Don't you know I'm a child of God?

  Maya Angelou

  Mother, Children, Husband

• Stand up straight and realize who you are, that you tower over your circumstances. You are a child of God. Stand up straight.

  Maya Angelou

  Inspirational, God, Children

  FaceBook post by Maya Angelou from Jan 30, 2013

• Most people don't grow up. Most people age. They find parking spaces, honor their credit cards, get married, have children, and call that maturity. What that is, is aging.

  Maya Angelou

  Inspirational, Motivational, Children

• I would ask every man and every woman who's had the blessing of having children, 'Would you deny your son or your daughter the ecstasy of finding someone to love?' To love someone takes a lot of courage. So how much more is one challenged when the love is of the same sex and the laws say, 'I forbid you from loving this person'?

  Maya Angelou

  Daughter, Sex, Children

  "Maya Angelou Called On New York State Senators To Back Gay Marriage In 2009" by Curtis M. Wong, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 28, 2014.

• Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.

  Maya Angelou

  Inspirational, Happiness, Education

  FaceBook post by Maya Angelou from Aug 30, 2015

• The best candy shop a child can be left alone in, is the library

  Maya Angelou

  Inspirational, Children, Book

  FaceBook post by Maya Angelou from Jul 06, 2010

• Sometimes guns really matter. Protecting those who need protection - children, women, minorities in rough parts of town, old folks living in places where cops aren't nearby. Guns are true empowerment for the powerless.

  Maya Angelou

  Children, Gun, Empowerment

  Source: www.foxnews.com

• Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.

  Maya Angelou

  Children, Ignorance, Kids

  FaceBook post by Maya Angelou from Nov 08, 2011

• If I have a monument in this world, it is my son.

  Maya Angelou

  Thank You, Mother, Children

  Maya Angelou, Jeffrey M. Elliot (1989). “Conversations with Maya Angelou”

• We need to remember to teach our children that solitude can be a much-to-be-desired condition. Not only is it acceptable to be alone; at times it is positively to be wished for.....In the silence we listen to ourselves. Then we ask questions of ourselves. We describe ourselves to ourselves, and in the quietude we may even hear the voice of God.

  Maya Angelou

  Children, Voice, Silence

• I'm convinced that I'm a child of God. That's wonderful, exhilarating, liberating, full of promise. But the burden which goes along with that is, I'm convinced that everybody is a child of God. . . . I weep a lot. I thank God I laugh a lot, too. The main thing in one's own private world is to try to laugh as much as you cry.

  Maya Angelou

  Children, Godly, Laughing

• I believe in living a poetic life, an art full life. Everything we do from the way we raise our children to the way we welcome our friends is part of a large canvas we are creating.

  Maya Angelou

  Art, Children, Inspirational Life

• Human beings are more alike than unalike. Whether in Paris, Texas, or Paris, France, we all want to have good jobs where we are needed and respected and paid just a little more than we deserve. We want healthy children, safe streets, to be loved and have the unmitigated gall to accept love. If we are religious, we want a place to perpetuate God. If not, we want a good lecture every once in a while. And everyone wants someplace to party on Saturday nights.

  Maya Angelou

  Religious, Jobs, Children

• Lift up your eyes upon
  This day breaking for you.
  Give birth again
  To the dream.
  Women, children, men,
  Take it into the palms of your hands.
  Mold it into the shape of your most
  Private need. Sculpt it into
  The image of your most public self.
  Lift up your hearts
  Each new hour holds new chances
  For a new beginning.

  Maya Angelou

  Dream, Children, New Beginnings

  Poem at 1992 Presidential Inaugural Ceremonies, delivered 21 January 1993

• Since time is the one immaterial object which we cannot influence - neither speed up nor slow down, add to nor diminish - it is an imponderably valuable gift. Each of us has a few minutes a day or a few hours a week which we could donate to an old folks home or a children's hospital ward. The elderly whose pillows we plump or whose water pitchers we refill may or may not thank us for our gift, but the gift is upholding the foundation of the universe.

  Maya Angelou

  Time, Children, War

  Maya Angelou (2011). “Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now”, p.10, Bantam

• Each child belongs to all of us and they will bring us a tomorrow in direct relation to the responsibility we have shown to them.

  Maya Angelou

  Children, Responsibility, Tomorrow

  FaceBook post by Maya Angelou from Jun 29, 2010

• Among other things, I'm thinking "I'm a child of God." That's amazing. And "I'm not only a child of God, but God loves me." The hardest part for me is to realize that while God loves me, and I am a child of God, I have to see the bigot and the brute and the rapist, and whether he or she knows it or not, I have to know that that person is a child of God. That is part of the responsibility - and it's hard.

  Maya Angelou

  Children, Responsibility, Thinking

  Source: www.oprah.com

• Shelter Network's programs and services are a rainbow in the clouds for homeless children and adults.

  Maya Angelou

  Children, Clouds, Rainbow

• My greatest blessing has been the birth of my son. My next greatest blessing has been my ability to turn people into children of mine.

  Maya Angelou

  Children, Son, Blessing

• What I think it really means is: I'm a teacher. I am a teacher. I teach all the time, as you do and as all of you do-whether we know it or not, whether we take responsibility for it or not. I hold nothing back because I want to see that light go off. I like to see the children say, 'I never thought of that before.' And I think, 'I've got them!'

  Maya Angelou

  Teacher, Children, Mean

• I am convinced that most people do not grow up...We marry and dare to have children and call that growing up. I think what we do is mostly grow old. We carry accumulation of years in our bodies, and on our faces, but generally our real selves, the children inside, are innocent and shy as magnolias.

  Maya Angelou

  Life, Children, Growing Up

  Maya Angelou (2008). “Letter to My Daughter”, p.7, Random House

• You dwell in whitened castles with deep and poisoned moats and cannot hear the curses which fill your children's throats.

  Maya Angelou

  Children, Castles, Moats

  Maya Angelou (2011). “I Shall Not Be Moved: Poems”, p.21, Random House

• "Baby, you know?" my mother once said to me. "I think you're the greatest woman I've ever met - and I'm not including my mother or Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt in that." She said, "You are very intelligent and you're very kind, and those two qualities do not often go together." Then she went across the street and got in her car, and I went the other way down to the streetcar. I thought, "Suppose she's right. She's intelligent - and she's too mean to lie." You see, a parent has the chance - and maybe the responsibility - to liberate her child. And my mom had liberated me when I was 17.

  Maya Angelou

  Mom, Mother, Baby

  Interview with Oprah Winfrey, www.oprah.com. December 2000.

You May Also Like:

Oprah Winfrey

Langston Hughes

Ruby Dee

Michelle Obama

Cicely Tyson

Toni Morrison

Alice Walker