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
Black
Accept
Else
Poverty
States
Accepting
Anything
Struggle
Different
Middle
Mind
Class
Think
State
Radically
Thinking
Poor
Blacks

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We believe 'Peter Rabbit' because Beatrix Potter believes it. You have to.
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I was responding to one thing for the woman I knew, and there's another thing for what did she give, right. She [Nina Simone] was a great teacher.
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We are better than we think and not yet what we want to be.
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Baseball is already the world's most tranquil sport. It is probably the only active sport where you are not seriously required to be alive to play.
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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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And you will understand all too soon That you, my children of battle, are your heroes
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Death is a slave's freedom.
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Don't want to be near you for the thoughts we share but the words we never have to speak.
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Art is not for the cultivated taste. It is to cultivate taste.
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The trip to Mars can only be understood through Black Americans. I say, the trip to Mars can only be understood through Black Americans.
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I prefer her [Nina Simone's] jazz period much more so than her folk period.
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Sacred cows make very poor gladiators.
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There are some things we do simply because the doing is a success.
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Follow your image as far as you can no matter how useless you think it is. Push yourself.
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You must be unintimidated by your own thoughts.
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Some say we are responsible for those we love. Others know we are responsible for those who love us.
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We [Black people] have always used our creativity to battle and we're not the only ones. Black Americans are certainly leaders in that simply because we were denied education and dealt with enforced illiteracy. But people seem to always forget that literacy is not the only way of learning things or conveying knowledge.
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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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I think that too many strangers were in her [Nina Simone's] life, and not enough people that she knew and loved.
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Rage is to writers what water is to fish.
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