Quote

Being Black and poor is, I think, radically different from being anything else and poor. Poor, to most Blacks, is a state of mind. Those who accept it are poor those who struggle are middle class.

Nikki Giovanni

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Nikki Giovanni
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: June 7
Poet
Teacher
Writer
Knoxville
Tennessee
Yolande Cornelia Giovanni
Jr
Think
State
Radically
Thinking
Poor
Blacks
Black
Accept
Else
Poverty
States
Accepting
Anything
Struggle
Different
Middle
Mind
Class

More quotes by Nikki Giovanni

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If you don't understand yourself you don't understand anybody else.
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If now isn't a good time for the truth I don't see when we'll get to it.
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A white face goes with a white mind. Occasionally a black face goes with a white mind. Very seldom a white face will have a black mind.
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I don't have a life-style, I have a life.
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My dream is a red dress Above my knees High-heel red sandals And me coming over the top The music booming Hi Howie I will say With a lovely smile I don't want to play the game I want to be it.
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I have not tried to tell the people anything. I have shared my views with the people but I have not tried to lead or correct them, assuming they need correction.
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I appreciate and enjoy my age.
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If you were a pure bolt of fire-cutting the skies I'd touch you-risking my life-not because I'm brave or strong, but because I'm fascinated by what the outcome would be.
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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 am so hip even my errors are correct
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There are things you stand up for because it’s right.
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If I can't do what I want to do, then my job is to not do what I want to do. It's not the same thing, but it's the best thing I can do.
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Art is not for the cultivated taste. It is to cultivate taste.
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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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Rage is to writers what water is to fish.
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I knew Stokely [Carmichael] and them, but when you got to that, you saw that Nina Simone started to take up their burden. She started to preach for them. She was taking on the burden of I want to tell the people.
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We all have our muses. My grandmother and my mother are the people I write for. I'll never have to worry about who buys my work, or who likes it, and who doesn't. The people who I want to be proud of me already are.
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You're only as good as your last book.
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Black love is Black wealth and they'll probably talk about my hard childhood and never understand that all the while I was quite happy
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I am proud of the hip hop generation. They are good business people and, actually, good people. It's strange that the only time the major press talks about them is when someone gets killed or does drugs or something yet these are the same press people who made heroes out of the Mafia and other crooks, you know.
Nikki Giovanni