Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr. Quotes
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Mistakes are a fact of life. It is the response to the error that counts.
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School buildings should be opened and used twenty four hours a day.
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White people really deal more with God and black people with Jesus.
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Who I am really keeps surprising me.
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The only advice [for new writers and poets] I can offer is to be yourself: not the self someone else wants you to be, but the self you are. Enjoy yourself and your life. But most of all travel and eat. That's how we learn.
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America may not be the best nation on earth, but it has conceived loftier ideals and dreamed higher dreams than any other nation. America is a heterogeneous nation of many different people of different races, religions, and creeds. Should this experiment go forth and prosper, we will have offered humans a new way to look at life; should it fail, we will simply go the way of all failed civilizations.
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If I could come back as anything - I'd be a bird, first, but definitely the command key is my second choice.
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I do not understand why any poet or writer would run for office; that's a different sense of who you are. I'm just a poet. I am as truthful as I can be. That makes me an artist. I heed the people; I do not lead the people.
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There are things you stand up for because it’s right.
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If you are sitting there waiting for someone to tell you how wonderful you are, you'll never get anything done. Women need to get over being women. I'm tired of that socialization of women; that we are always supposed to be sitting around pleasing somebody.
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Now, everything I do, I do because I want to. And I believe the best is yet to come.
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The more you love someone the more he wants from you and the less you have to give since you've already given him your love.
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We black women are the single group in the West intact. And anybody can see we're pretty shaky. We are, however (all praises), the only group that derives its identity from itself.
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We are better than we think and not yet what we want to be.
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You must be unintimidated by your own thoughts.
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If culture was a railroad, I can see the tracks running from the Spirituals to the Hip Hop Nation.
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The job of the architect becomes more difficult in this secular age. Where once he had a god to extol, he now has humans like himself; where once he had "he," he now has "she" and "they.
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Everybody that loves freedom loves Harriet Tubman because she was determined not only to be free, but to make free as many people as she could.
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Poetry is the most mistaught subject in any school because we teach poetry by form and not by content.
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No one needs to teach you to be mean; we need to be taught to be kind.
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BEFORE YOU JUMP OFF A BRIDGE OR HANG YOURSELF OR BE UNHAPPY PLEASE CONSIDER: LIVE FOR YOURSELF; THOSE WHO HATE YOU HAVE NO PURCHASE
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I really don't think life is about the I-could-have-beens. Life is only about the I-tried-to-do. I don't mind the failure but I can't imagine that I'd forgive myself if I didn't try.
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The future is in good hands.
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We have a world to conquer...one person at a time...starting with ourselves.