When you learn, teach, when you get, give.

Asked for the best advice she has received, Angelou recalls her grandmother in a small Arkansas village repeating this instruction. She says she initially found it too simple, but now shares it with students and peers. Asked whether it influenced her decision to teach, she describes Wake Forest as a permanent teaching platform and the wider world as another classroom.

Pass on what you learn and share what you receive; knowledge and resources bring responsibilities toward other people.

Angelou expressly credits her grandmother. This documents her repeating and endorsing the advice, not her inventing the saying; the interview does not establish its earliest author.

Life, Kindness, Morality, Wisdom, Education

• When you know better, you do better.
• read what you love until you love to read. Naval Ravikant
• Stay hungry. Stay foolish. Steve Jobs
• Learn to sell, learn to build. If you can do both, you will be unstoppable. Naval Ravikant
• Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not. Dr. Seuss

Maya Angelou, Melissa Kansky, “Q&A: Maya Angelou on teaching and giving,” Elon News Network, 27 September 2012. Checked at Quotogeny, https://quotogeny.com/q/when-you-learn-teach-when-you-get-give/ (29 October 2026).

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