Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr. Quotes
-
I’m a big fan of history—applying the lessons as well as the joys and sadness. If we pay attention, we would see how we affect each other. In terms of time, we are not that far from one another. If we were to look back a century, it would seem like a long time; but, if we look at it by decades then it’s only 10 years, and by generations it’s only five.
-
I had a really nice childhood; I had great parents. I earned my allowance by washing dishes, and in the summer I earned my allowance by working in daddy's garden.
-
School buildings should be opened and used twenty four hours a day.
-
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.
-
Mistakes are a fact of life. It is the response to the error that counts.
-
White people really deal more with God and black people with Jesus.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Who I am really keeps surprising me.
-
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.
-
If I could come back as anything - I'd be a bird, first, but definitely the command key is my second choice.
-
There are things you stand up for because it’s right.
-
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.
-
No one needs to teach you to be mean; we need to be taught to be kind.
-
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.
-
Poetry is the most mistaught subject in any school because we teach poetry by form and not by content.
-
Now, everything I do, I do because I want to. And I believe the best is yet to come.
-
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.
-
If culture was a railroad, I can see the tracks running from the Spirituals to the Hip Hop Nation.
-
You must be unintimidated by your own thoughts.
-
We are better than we think and not yet what we want to be.
-
The future is in good hands.
-
and sometimes I sit down at my typewriter and I think not of someone cause there isn't anyone to think about and i wonder is it worth it
-
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.