If I am not good to myself, how can I expect anyone else to be good to me?
Maya AngelouRead
We are not our brother’s keeper we are our brother and we are our sister. We must look past complexion and see community.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes the interconnectedness of humanity and the importance of seeing beyond superficial differences.
Maya Angelou's quote underscores the idea that we are all part of a greater human family, urging us to recognize our shared identity rather than focusing on distinctions such as race or color. She challenges the notion of merely supporting one another from a distance ('brother's keeper') and instead calls for a deeper sense of unity and empathy, encouraging individuals to view themselves as integral members of a community where everyone’s experiences and struggles are interconnected.
Themes
CommunityInterconnectednessEmpathyUnityDiversity
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about social justice, one might use this quote to emphasize the need for solidarity and support among diverse groups.
More from Maya Angelou
All quotes →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 commensurate speed.
Maya AngelouRead
The white American man makes the white American woman maybe not superfluous but just a little kind of decoration. Not really important to turning around the wheels of the state. Well the black American woman has never been able to feel that way. No black American man at any time in our history in the United States has been able to feel that he didn't need that black woman right against him, shoulder to shoulder-in that cotton field, on the auction block, in the ghetto, wherever.
Maya AngelouRead
I dreamt we walked together along the shore. We made satisfying small talk and laughed. This morning I found sand in my shoe and a seashell in my pocket. Was I only dreaming?
Maya AngelouRead
I know that I'm not the easiest person to live with. The challenge I put on myself is so great that the person I live with feels himself challenged. I bring a lot to bear, and I don't know how not to.
Maya AngelouRead
I think Clinton, after getting into office and into Washington, was shocked at being bludgeoned. So he spent time trying to be all things to all people - one way guaranteed not to be successful or respected in a lion's den. You can't just play around with all those big cats - you've got to take somebody on.
Maya AngelouRead
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Our dead are never dead to us until we have forgotten them: they can be injured by us, they can be wounded; they know all our penitence, all our aching sense that their place is empty, all the kisses we bestow on the smallest relic of their presence.
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Listen- all that she was then, all that she is now, those gestures, everything I remember but won't or can't articulate anymore, the perfect words that are somehow made imperfect when used to describe her and all that should remain unsaid about her- it is all unsupported by reason. I know that. But that enigmatic calm that attaches itself to people in the presence of reason- it's something from which I haven't been able to take comfort, not reliably, not since her.
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Men get to be a mixture of the charming mannerisms of the women they have known.
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In general she had found that the main drawback in being a man was that conversations were less interesting.
Ursula K. Le GuinRead