If I am not good to myself, how can I expect anyone else to be good to me?
Maya AngelouRead
Effective action is always unjust.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Taking action often involves moral dilemmas and may lead to unfair outcomes.
Maya Angelouβs quote suggests that effective action, particularly in the face of injustice or complex situations, frequently results in outcomes that can be deemed unjust. This highlights the reality that pursuing a goal or making a significant impact often comes with ethical compromises or consequences that do not favor everyone involved, prompting reflection on the moral implications of our choices.
Themes
ActionInjusticeMoralChoicesConsequences
In practice
Example use cases
In a debate about social justice, one might refer to this quote to emphasize the complexities involved in achieving change.
More from Maya Angelou
All quotes βI 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
Similar quotes
You may think it was a very little thing, and in these days it seems to me like a trifle, but it was a most important incident in my life. I could scarcely credit that I, the poor boy, had earned a dollar in less than a day; that by honest work, I had earned a dollar. I was a more hopeful and thoughtful boy from that time.
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We imagine that whatever is unpleasant is our duty! Is that anything like the spirit of our Lord, "I *delight* to do Thy will, O My God.
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We're receiving information from all the planes of our consciousness all the time, but we don't acknowledge their existence; we treat the information as static, as noise.
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Your own soul is nourished when you are kind; it is destroyed when you are cruel.
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I think you get into trouble as an author and a journalist when, rather than owning the gaps, you try to elide them.
David GrannRead