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To be young, gifted and black!

Nina Simone

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Nina Simone
Age: 75 †
Born: 1933
Born: February 21
Died: 2008
Died: April 21
Composer
Jazz Pianist
Recording Artist
Singer
Singer-Songwriter
Tryon
North Carolina
Eunice Kathleen Waymon
High Priestess of Soul
Gifted
Black
Young

More quotes by Nina Simone

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Jazz is not just music, it's a way of life, it's a way of being, a way of thinking.
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Jazz is a white term to define black people. My music is black classical music.
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I think if I were over there in America, protest music would be more important. But I'm not going.
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When I choose material for an album all these songs I grew up with pour into my head.
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My job is not done. I address my songs now to the third world. I am popular all over Asia and Africa and the Middle East, not to speak of South Africa, where I'm trying to go to see Nelson Mandela.
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Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood, a song that was written for Simone, she confronted the band's lead singer, Eric Burdon. So you're the honky, she said, who stole my song and got a hit out of it?
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I don't like to go to strange places.
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Music is one of the ways by which you can know everything which is going on in the world. You can feel... through music... Whew... you can feel the vibrations of everybody in the world at any given moment.
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Music has been a burden and a joy for as long as I can remember.
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When I was studying... there weren't any black concert pianists. My choices were intuitive, and I had the technique to do it. People have heard my music and heard the classic in it, so I have become known as a black classical pianist.
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I can't stand loud guitars that make me deaf.
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I think the rich will eventually have to cave in too, because the economic situation around the world is not gonna tolerate the United States being on top forever.
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There's no excuse for the young people not knowing who the heroes and heroines are or were.
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I'm a nut for Bach as a composer.
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To most white people, jazz means black and jazz means dirt, and that's not what I play. I play black classical music.
Nina Simone
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It's a good time for black people to be alive.
Nina Simone
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I do not believe in mixing of the races. You can quote me. I don't believe in it, and I never have. I've never changed. I've never changed my hair. I've never changed my color, I have always been proud of myself, and my fans are proud of me for remaining the way I've always been. I married a white man one time, but he was a creep
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I know I'm different, but I don't think about it.
Nina Simone
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I tell you what freedom is to me: no fear.
Nina Simone
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You can't be different if you look at it. Being gifted is different. I had that in my piano playing. I'm very thankful for that. I'm very aware of that. The style and what I fed is just me. I never worked at it. It just happened.
Nina Simone