Maya Angelou Quotes About Mothers

• 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

• To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power. Or the climbing, falling colors of a rainbow.

  Maya Angelou

  Mothers Day, Mom, Mother Daughter

  Maya Angelou (2012). “The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou”, p.49, Modern Library

• My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors.

  Maya Angelou

  Education, Mother, School

  FaceBook post by Maya Angelou from Oct 07, 2015

• I am a woman phenomenally, phenomenal woman that is your grandmother, that is your mother, that is your sister, that is you and that is me.

  Maya Angelou

  Mother, Phenomenal Woman, Grandmother

• If I could give you one thought, it would be to lift someone up. Lift a stranger up--lift her up. I would ask you, mother and father, brother and sister, lovers, mother and daughter, father and son, lift someone. The very idea of lifting someone up will lift you, as well.

  Maya Angelou

  Daughter, Mother, Brother

• 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”

• My mother had said me, "All right, you've been raised, so don't let anybody else raise you. You know the difference between right and wrong. Do right. And remember - you can always come home." And she continued to liberate me until she died. On the night she died, I went to the hospital. I told my mom, "Let me tell you about yourself. You deserved a great daughter, and you got one. And you liberated me to be one. So if it's time for you to go, you may have done everything God brought you here to do."

  Maya Angelou

  Mom, Mother, Daughter

• I'm working at trying to be a Christian, and that's serious business. It's like trying to be a good Jew, a good Muslim, a good Buddhist, a good Shintoist, a good Zoroastrian, a good friend, a good lover, a good mother, a good buddy: it's serious business.

  Maya Angelou

  Christian, Mother, Buddhist

  Interview with George Plimpton (Summer 1990), as published in "Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Ninth Series" edited by George Plimpton, July 1, 1992.

• I'm grateful to intelligent people. That doesn't mean educated. That doesn't mean intellectual. I mean really intelligent. What black old people used to call 'mother wit' means intelligence that you had in your mother's womb. That's what you rely on. You know what's right to do.

  Maya Angelou

  Life, Mother, Grateful

• I will look after you and I will look after anybody you say needs to be looked after, any way you say. I am here. I brought my whole self to you. I am your mother.

  Maya Angelou

  Inspirational, Mother, Self

• My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy.

  Maya Angelou

  Mother, Teacher, Educational

  Twitter post from Oct 07, 2015

• I have a feeling that I make a very good friend, and I'm a good mother, and a good sister, and a good citizen. I am involved in life itself - all of it. And I have a lot of energy and a lot of nerve.

  Maya Angelou

  Mother, Good Friend, Feelings

  FaceBook post by Maya Angelou from Aug 14, 2015

• I'm working at trying to be a Christian and that's serious business. It's like trying to be a good Jew, a good Muslim, a good Buddhist, a good Shintoist, a good Zoroastrian, a good friend, a good lover, a good mother, a good buddy—it's serious business. It's not something where you think, Oh, I've got it done. I did it all day, hotdiggety. The truth is, all day long you try to do it, try to be it, and then in the evening if you're honest and have a little courage you look at yourself and say, Hmm. I only blew it eighty-six times. Not bad.

  Maya Angelou

  Christian, Mother, Buddhist

• "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.

• A mother's love liberates.

  Maya Angelou

  Family, Mom, Mother

• If a human being dreams a great dream, dares to love somebody; if a human being dares to be Martin King, or Mahatma Gandhi, or Mother Theresa, or Malcolm X; if a human being dares to be bigger than the condition into which she or he was born-it means so can you. And so you can try to stretch, stretch, stretch yourself so you can internalize, 'Homo sum, humani nil a me alienum puto. I am a human being, nothing human can be alien to me.' That's one thing I'm learning.

  Maya Angelou

  Mother, Dream, Kings

• Listen carefully to what country people call mother wit. In those homely sayings are couched the collective wisdom of generations.

  Maya Angelou

  Mother, Country, People

• Mother's life flowed radiant. Flourescent-tipped waves on incoming tides.

  Maya Angelou

  Mother, Tides, Wave

• My mother raised me, and then freed me.

  Maya Angelou

  Mother, Raised

  Maya Angelou (2013). “Even The Stars Look Lonesome”, p.25, Hachette UK

• If you were the President of the United States or the Queen of England - you couldn't have a person who would be more protective than my mother was for me. Which meant really that I could dare to do all sorts of things.

  Maya Angelou

  Mother, Queens, President

  "Exclusive Interview With Maya Angelou on Her New Book, Mom & Me & Mom". Interview with Marianne Schnall, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 10, 2013.

• By no amount of agile exercising of a wistful imagination could my mother have been called lenient. Generous she was; indulgent never. Kind, yes, permissive, never. In her world, people she accepted paddled their own canoes, pulled their own weight, put their own shoulders to their own plows and pushed like hell.

  Maya Angelou

  Mother, Exercise, People

• Though we are many, each of us is achingly alone, piercingly alone. Only when we confess our confusion can we remember that he was a gift to us and we did have him. He came to us from the creator, trailing creativity in abundance. Despite the anguish, his life was sheathed in mother love, family love, and survived and did more than that. He thrived with passion and compassion, humor and style. We had him whether we know who he was or did not know, he was ours and we were his.

  Maya Angelou

  Mother, Passion, Creativity

  "Liveblogging Michael Jackson's funeral and memorial service" by Oliver Burkeman, www.theguardian.com. July 7, 2009.

• My mother is so full of joy and life. I am her child. And that is better than being the child of anyone else in the world.

  Maya Angelou

  Mother, Children, Joy

• I became the kind of parent my mother was to me.

  Maya Angelou

  Mother, Parent, Kind

  "Exclusive Interview With Maya Angelou on Her New Book, Mom & Me & Mom". Interview With Marianne Schnall, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 10, 2013.

• Cooking certain dishes, like roast pork, reminds me of my mother.

  Maya Angelou

  Mother, Cooking, Pork

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