If I am not good to myself, how can I expect anyone else to be good to me?
Maya AngelouRead
In all the institutions I try to be present and accountable for all I do and leave undone. I know that eventually I shall have to be present and accountable n the presence of God. I do not wish to be found wanting.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes the importance of accountability and awareness of one's actions and their consequences.
Maya Angelou reflects on the necessity of being present and taking responsibility for both our actions and inactions, recognizing that this accountability will ultimately extend beyond earthly institutions to a divine judgment. It underscores a moral imperative to live with integrity and mindfulness, as we will ultimately have to answer for how we lived our lives.
Themes
AccountabilityActionsResponsibilityIntegrityPresence
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used as a guiding principle in leadership seminars to emphasize ethical responsibility.
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
Similar quotes
At the bottom no one in life can help anyone else in life; this one experiences over and over in every conflict and every perplexity: that one is alone. That isn't as bad as it may first appear; and again it is the best thing in life that each should have everything in himself; his fate, his future, his whole expanse and world.
Rainer Maria RilkeRead
God save the Queen and a fascist regime … a flabby toothless fascism, to be sure. Never go too far in any direction, is the basic law on which Limey-Land is built. The Queen stabilizes the whole sinking shithouse and keeps a small elite of wealth and privilege on top. The English have gone soft in the outhouse. England is like some stricken beast too stupid to know it is dead. Ingloriously foundering in its own waste products, the backlash and bad karma of empire
William S. BurroughsRead
The One remains, the many change and pass;_x000D_ _x000D_ Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly;_x000D_ _x000D_ Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,_x000D_ _x000D_ Stains the white radiance of Eternity,_x000D_ _x000D_ Until Death tramples it to fragments.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyRead
The U.S. immigration laws are bad - really, really bad. I'd say treatment of immigrants is one of the greatest injustices done in our government's name.
Bill GatesRead
I expect that any day now, I will have said all I have to say; I'll have used up all my characters, and then I'll be free to get on with my real life.
Anne TylerRead
To build a better world we need to replace the patchwork of lucky breaks and arbitrary advantages today that determine success--the fortunate birth dates and the happy accidents of history--with a society that provides opportunities for all.
Malcolm GladwellRead