Did Maya Angelou say "Never make someone a priority when all you are to them is an option"?

Q: Did Maya Angelou say "Never make someone a priority when all you are to them is an option"?

No. There is no Angelou source — not a book, poem, essay, interview or speech — and the line never appeared on her own verified account. The oldest instance located is an unattributed message-board comment from December 2005; the first print appearance carrying her name is a 2008 book, For Love Alone, by an author writing as Sabdale; the first tweet joining quote and name comes in June 2010. Snopes has the case filed as research in progress and has never found an origin. And there is a twin worth knowing about: reword this as 'Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option' and the same internet hands it, just as confidently, to Mark Twain.

Who really said it

Never make someone a priority when all you are to them is an option

Nobody has ever produced a source Unknown Anonymous · earliest located instance December 2005

Disputed Rights unconfirmed

There is no Angelou source — not a book, poem, essay, interview or speech — and the line never appeared on her own verified account. The oldest instance located is an unattributed message-board comment from December 2005; the first print appearance carrying her name is a 2008 book, For Love Alone, by an author writing as Sabdale; the first tweet joining quote and name comes in June 2010. Snopes has the case filed as research in progress and has never found an origin. And there is a twin worth knowing about: reword this as ‘Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option’ and the same internet hands it, just as confidently, to Mark Twain.

Last verified 21 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

Put it on a slide

Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“Never make someone a priority when all you are to them is an option” Unattributed. Widely credited to Maya Angelou, with no source in her work; earliest located instance, December 2005.

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Maya Angelou. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

We couldn’t verify where this wording comes from, so there’s no rights status to give. Safe to present as an unverified or anonymous line — just don’t assert a specific author or source.

Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool

In context

Evoking the world of Maya Angelou — American memoirist, poet and civil-rights activist. Theme: "Never make someone a priority when all you are to them is an option". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Never make someone a priority when all you are to them is an option". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The source

Origin: Unknown — no source located
Earliest located: December 2005, message board, unattributed
First credited to Angelou: 2008, in the book For Love Alone
On her own account: Never posted

Never make someone a priority when all you are to them is an option. Unattributed, December 2005

The wording as it circulates. The oldest instance located carries no name at all — and the version with the older paper trail is phrased differently and credited to Mark Twain. One idea, two wordings, two famous authors, zero sources.

Snopes — the Angelou attribution examined

How we traced it

The oldest instance anyone has surfaced is a message-board comment of December 2005, and it credits nobody. That is the shape of a saying in circulation, not a line lifted from a famous book — when people quote Angelou they tend to say so the fact-check ↗.
Her name arrives later and from nowhere in particular. The first printed work located that pairs quote and author is a 2008 book called For Love Alone, by an author writing as Sabdale; the first tweet doing the same is June 2010. Nothing in Angelou’s own published work — the memoirs, the poems, the essays — has ever been produced, and the line was never posted from her own account.
After her death in 2014 the attribution hardened, and outlets including the BBC and the Guardian carried it as hers. That is worth sitting with: a saying can pass through major newsrooms without acquiring a single citation. Meanwhile the reworded version has a much better-documented trail, running back through anonymous 2005 and 2007 instances to a 2002 credit to a woman named Nina Potts-Jefferies — and it wears Mark Twain’s name instead the Twain twin →.

We cannot state a rights status and have left the field empty rather than guess, because the author is unknown. But the stakes here run the opposite way from most misattributions. Angelou died in 2014, so anything genuinely hers is firmly in copyright and controlled by her estate for decades yet — which means a merchandiser who believes this line is hers should not be printing it at all, and one who quietly assumes ‘quotes are free’ is exposed twice over: to the estate if the attribution were right, and to whoever actually wrote it if it is not. Compare the Twain-credited twin, where the false author’s 1910 death date makes people feel safe for no good reason. This is not legal advice.

Fact-check

The attribution problem

This saying exists in two wordings and has been given two different famous authors — Maya Angelou for this version, Mark Twain for the other. When one idea supports two confident credits, neither is a memory. Both are choices.

Not Maya Angelou no source located

Nothing in the memoirs, poems, essays, interviews or speeches, and it was never posted from her own account. The credit is first located in a 2008 book and a 2010 tweet, three years after the earliest anonymous instance the fact-check ↗.

Not Mark Twain either same saying, second famous name

Reworded as ‘Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option,’ it is credited to Twain — a credit datable to a tweet of September 2008, ninety-eight years after he died. That version has the older paper trail: an unattributed 2005 newspaper instance, an ‘Author Unknown’ listing in 2007, and a 2002 credit to Nina Potts-Jefferies the Twain version →.

Repeated by outlets that check other things citation-free

After Angelou’s death in 2014 the BBC and the Guardian both carried the line as hers. Neither cited a source, because there is not one to cite. Reputable repetition is not evidence; it is just louder circulation.

The false credit here raises the risk in copyright if genuine

Twain fakes get reused freely because he died in 1910 and everyone assumes public domain. Angelou died in 2014, so the same lazy reuse runs straight at a living estate. If you would not print it believing it were hers, do not print it believing the internet.

Author unknown. Not Maya Angelou — no source has ever been produced — and not Mark Twain, who is credited with the reworded twin of the same saying the fact-check ↗.

Context

Why it resonates

It is the sentence you send a friend who already knows the answer. The asymmetry it names — you are rearranging your life around someone who is keeping you in reserve — is common enough that the line does not need to be clever, only exact. It is exact.

Which is also why it collects famous authors. Advice this plain gains nothing from being true and everything from being authoritative, so the internet supplies an authority: Angelou if you want warmth and dignity, Twain if you want dry good sense. The saying itself does not care, and never did have a father.

One idea, two wordings, two famous names, and not a single citation between them.

The two-name pattern, side by side

This wording — 'Never make someone a priority when all you are to them is an option' — is credited to Maya Angelou. Earliest located instance: an unattributed message-board comment, December 2005.

The other wording — 'Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option' — is credited to Mark Twain. Earliest located print instance: 2002, credited there to Nina Potts-Jefferies.

Neither famous credit has a source. Both credits surface in 2008, six years after the older wording was already in print.

The Angelou version travelled through the BBC and the Guardian after her death in 2014, which is how a saying acquires the appearance of provenance without acquiring any.

If you want a genuine Angelou line on this subject, use one with a book and a page behind it — she wrote plenty.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Love Character

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Did Maya Angelou say 'Never make someone a priority…'?snopes.com

The fact-check: the December 2005 unattributed instance, the 2008 book, the June 2010 tweet, and no origin found.

'Never allow someone to be your priority…' — the citation trailbarrypopik.com

Barry Popik on the reworded twin: a 2002 credit to Nina Potts-Jefferies, and the Mark Twain credit starting in 2008.

Snopes syndication of the Angelou fact-checkyahoo.com

The same investigation as republished, useful if the original is behind a wall.

Popularly credited author

Why it gets pinned on Angelou

Maya Angelou

1928–2014 · American memoirist, poet and civil-rights activist

Maya Angelou (born Marguerite Annie Johnson, 1928–2014) wrote I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and read at a presidential inauguration, and she is now one of the most misquoted writers alive or dead. The reason is specific: she genuinely did write short, direct, second-person counsel about self-respect, so a sentence in that register slides under her name without resistance. She also has a real line on almost exactly this territory — people will forget what you said, but never how you made them feel — which primes readers to accept another. The estate of a writer who died in 2014 controls her work for decades to come, which makes getting the attribution right a practical matter and not just a scholarly one.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Unattributed saying. Earliest located instance: a message-board comment, December 2005, uncredited. First located pairing with Maya Angelou’s name: For Love Alone (2008). No source in Angelou’s published work has ever been produced.

MLA (9th ed.)

“Never make someone a priority when all you are to them is an option.” Unattributed saying; earliest located instance December 2005.

APA (7th ed.)

Never make someone a priority when all you are to them is an option. (2005). Unattributed saying [earliest located instance].

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Never make someone a priority when all you are to them is an option’?” Last verified 21 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/never-make-someone-a-priority