Maya Angelou
Angelou (1928–2014) was a towering
figure in American letters, as a
Pulitzer Prize–winning poet and a
memoirist, most famously for I Know
Why the Caged Bird Sings, a 1969
account of her harrowing youth (she
was raped by her mother’s boyfriend
at age 8, which so traumatized her
that she went five years without
speaking). Also an actor, dancer and
singer, Angelou became a civil rights
activist in the 1960s and shot to
international fame with the
publication of Caged Bird. Into her
80s, Angelou’s commanding,
melodious voice helped make her a
fixture on the lecture circuit—and at
presidential inaugurations, where she
read poems for Bill Clinton and
Barack Obama. It was, in sum, an
incredible life, with many twists and
turns. Her guiding principle was to
make one’s own path, a philosophy
Katie Couric quoted in her book The
Best Advice I Ever Got. “My paternal
grandmother, Mrs. Annie Henderson,
gave me advice that I have used for
65 years,” Angelou told her. “She
said, ‘If the world puts you on a road
you do not like, if you look ahead and
do not want that destination which is
being offered and you look behind
and you do not want to return to your
place of departure, step off the road.
Build yourself a new path.’ ”Madeleine Albright
The daughter of a Czech ambassador to Yugoslavia, she came to the U.S.
with her family in 1948, became a naturalized citizen and pursued
advanced studies in international relations. Involved with Democratic
politics, Albright, 82, worked on the National Security Council under
President Jimmy Carter, served as U.N. ambassador in the Clinton
administration and in 1997 became the nation’s first female secretary of
state. One secret to her remarkable career was self-confidence, learned
from her father. “Whenever my father saw that I had to take on something
difficult or do something that I might not have confidence about, he would
say, ‘Strike it,’ ” Albright told Good Housekeeping. “He sometimes mixed
up English idioms, so that was his version of ‘go for it.’ To me that meant
you have to believe in yourself and go after what you want.”
but in the early 20th century
began to evolve into a more
abstract style, initially influenced
by Henri Matisse. Today, his works
command astronomical sums—in
2015, Women of Algiers sold for
$179.3 million at Christie’s in
New York, the highest price ever
paid for a painting. Picasso’s vast
output was achieved through
talent and inspiration, to be sure,
but also calculation. “Our goals
can only be reached through a
vehicle of a plan, in which we
must fervently believe, and upon
which we must vigorously act,” he
said. “There is no other route to
success.” But be careful what you
wish for. Also Picasso: “Success
is dangerous. One begins to copy
oneself, and to copy oneself is
more dangerous than to copy
others. It leads to sterility.”Pablo Picasso
The Spanish painter and sculptor
was arguably the dominant visual
artist of the 20th century. A
co-founder of Cubism, Picasso
(1881–1973) was a revolutionary
who started out painting
traditionally representative figures