Wise words from Maya Angelou book:”I know why the caged birds sings”

I just recently laid my hand on this wonderful book by Maya Angelou as part of my reading challenge which I would be blogging about when I’m done. I don’t regret reading this book cause it was worth the time.I finished this in a day and right now I’m about to get me the rest of her autobiography.so to cut to the chase, I would like to say this book was filled with wise and inspirational words I plan to have with me for a really long time but here are my top best(in no particular order)

1. “I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy.” : This right here deserves a gold medal. After reading this, I realized that I unconsciously associated ignorance to illiteracy but after pondering on this I realized that a literate can be more ignorant than an illiterate. Going to school is not enough to save you from the mental disease of ignorance.

2. “Mother whispered, ‘See, you don’t have to think about doing the right thing, If you’re for the right thing, then you do it without thinking.” -I you ponder on this,you would agree.You find it easier to make decisions when your mind is convinced that your decision is right putting aside external factors.

3.“She used to say that her secret to life was that she “hoped for the best, was prepared for the worst, so anything in between didn’t come as a surprise.” :That way you won’t be disappointed soo much.

4.“Your grandmother says you read a lot. Every chance you get. That’s good, but not good enough. Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with the shades of deeper meaning.”  :To me I believe this is another way of saying that you make words come alive by reading them out loud.You are able to digest it even more and fully grasp the emotion behind it.

5.
“The needs of a society determine its ethics, and in the Black American ghettos the hero is that man who is offered only the crumbs from his country’s table but by ingenuity and courage is able to take for himself a Lucullan feast. Hence the janitor who lives in one room but sports a robin’s-egg-blue Cadillac is not laughed at but admired, and the domestic who buys forty-dollar shoes is not criticized but is appreciated. We know that they have put to use their full mental and physical powers. Each single gain feeds into the gains of the body collective.” :Don’t live up to what society has labelled you.Break those boundaries.

6.

“He explained when we were smaller that when things were very bad his soul just crawled behind his heart and curled up and went to sleep.”  -From my understanding instead of facing the situation head on,he rather just try and forget it.

7.
“People whose history and future were threatened each day by extinction considered that it was only by divine intervention that they were able to live at all.” -After they have gone through soo much to a point they believed they wont making,everyday of their life would have them thanking GOD that they survived it all.

8.
“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. 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.”  -Black female get assaulted from a tender age,Have to go through the patriarchy get hated by the whites and are from a race with no power politically and their bold like character is seen as something amusing and distasteful .Such is not accepted as the struggle they’ve overcome and should be appreciated with enthusiasm.

9.
“Without willing it, I had gone from being ignorant of being ignorant to being aware of being aware. And the worst part of my awareness was that I didn’t know what I was aware of.” -When you are ignorant about something,you have no idea you are but when you are fully aware,you know it.The worse part of her awareness was that she did not quite understand what she was aware of.

10.
“Of course I could drive. Idiots and lunatics drove cars, why not the brilliant Marguerite Johnson?”

“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. Few, if any, survive their teens. Most surrender to the vague but murderous pressure of adult conformity. It becomes easier to die and avoid conflict than to maintain a constant battle with the superior forces of maturity.”

“Anything that works against you can also work for you once you understand the Principle of Reverse.”  :Newton Third law of motion with a little twist

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