Maya Angelou Quotes

It used to be said that war was the locomotive of history, with its power to accelerate change. The coronavirus crisis has that same power. It has already shown us who we really are, and how there is much more than unites than divides us. It has shown how governments need to work with their citizens to overcome threats or challenges.

We need to infuse politics with ideas like compassion and empathy, and a sense that we live in an interdependent world.

Americans don't like to stand by while innocent people are killed and watch a human disaster unfold. It goes against our very fiber. We feel compelled to do something.

We are the world.

To realize that new world we must prefer the values of freedom and equality above all other values - above personal wealth, technical power and nationalism.

I was raised by my parents to believe that you had a moral obligation to try and help save the world.

I have vanity and greed enough for one person. But at the same time, I feel in my bones you lose a lot of life's value if you don't see yourself as a member of the family of man.

I believe the world is one big family, and we need to help each other.

Everyone has a responsibility towards this larger family of man, but especially if you're privileged, that increases your responsibility.

When you truly accept that those children in some far off place in the global village have the same value as you in God's eyes or even in just your eyes, then your life is forever changed; you see something that you can't un-see.

There cannot be enduring peace, prosperity, equality and brotherhood in this world if our aims are so separate and divergent, if we do not accept that in the end we are people, all alike, sharing the Earth among ourselves and also with other sentient beings, all of whom have an equal role and stake in the state of this planet and its players.

There has to be a social commitment, a social consciousness that joins men together. On the basis of their coming together, they do not transgress against themselves and they do not transgress against others.

I kind of feel like we're all humans; we all live on this planet. I kind of always wish there was more of a partnership - a really healthy relationship between people, working together to do things and make it good and change.

When it comes to the fundamental issues that humanity faces, I think that solutions involve shifting consciousness towards cooperation.

One's own self-worth is tied to the worth of the community to which one belongs, which is intimately connected to humanity in general. What happens in Darfur becomes an assault on my own community, and on me as an individual. That's what the human family is all about.

I think my kids are pretty well-rounded citizens of the world.

The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.

Mankind's salvation lies exclusively in everyone's making everything his business, in the people of the East being anything but indifferent to what is thought in the West, and in the people of the West being anything but indifferent to what happens in the East.

We know who speaks for the nations. But who speaks for humanity? Who speaks for earth?

We recognize and accept our own deep involvement in the destiny of men everywhere.

All the human kind is but one family, dispersed over the face of the whole earth; all men are brothers, and ought to love each other as such.

Our country is the world — our countrymen are all mankind

If you take me out of it, I find 'six degrees' to be a beautiful concept that we should try to live by. It's about compassion and responsibility for everyone on the planet.

We just have to be careful of our actions as world citizens.

There are big problems that change the world. If we are working together, that will make us understand each other, appreciate each other, help each other.