You may write me down in history / With your bitter, twisted lies,
These are the first lines of Still I Rise, the title poem of Angelou’s 1978 collection And Still I Rise. The poem answers its accusers one stanza at a time, each ending on the refrain “still I’ll rise”.
History, despite its wrenching pain / Cannot be unlived, but if faced / With courage, need not be lived again.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear / I rise / Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear / I rise
Just like moons and like suns, / With the certainty of tides, / Just like hopes springing high, / Still I’ll rise.
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
The rank is but the guinea’s stamp, / The Man’s the gowd for a’ that.