Maya Angelou quotes about identity

We may act sophisticated and worldly but I believe we feel safest when we go inside ourselves and find home, a place where we belong and maybe the only place we really do.

We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike.

The woman who survives intact and happy must be at once tender and tough.

Human beings are more alike than unalike, and what is true anywhere is true everywhere.

Style is as unique and nontransferable and perfectly personal as a fingerprint.

You will always be in fashion if you are true to yourself, and only if you are true to yourself.

In diversity there is beauty and there is strength.

A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, but a woman called by a devaluing name will only be weakened by the misnomer.

Spirit is an invisible force made visible to all life.

I have lived in this body all my life and know it much better than any fashion designer.

Good manners and tolerance, which are the highest manifestation of style, can often transform disaster into good fortune.

If our children are to approve of themselves, they must see that we approve of ourselves.

Diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all the threads of the tapestry are equal in value no matter their color; equal in importance no matter their texture.

When people are young, they desperately need to conform, and no one can embarrass a young person in public so much as an adult to whom he or she is related.

The plague of racism is insidious, entering into our minds as smoothly and quietly and invisibly as floating airborne microbes enter into our bodies to find lifelong purchase in our bloodstreams.

Each of us must care enough for ourselves to be ready and able to come to our own self-defense.

The judicious response to a gibe can disarm the rude person, removing the power to injure.

We can too easily become what we are called with all the unwelcome responsibilities the title makes us heir to.

If the emperor is standing in my living room stripped to the buff, nothing should prevent me from saying that since he has no clothes on, he is not ready for public congress.

If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat.

The Black female is assaulted in her tender years by all those common forces of nature at the same time that she is caught in the tripartite crossfire of masculine prejudice, white illogical hate and Black lack of power.

She was one of the few gentlewomen I have ever known, and has remained throughout my life the measure of what a human being can be.

It seemed terribly unfair to have a toothache and a headache and have to bear at the same time the heavy burden of Blackness.

To be left alone on the tightrope of youthful unknowing is to experience the excruciating beauty of full freedom and the threat of eternal indecision.

The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerence. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.