Nina Simone Quotes

We have ordered things so long in a certain way, we are numb. Nobody dares question it. This is what is wrong, symbolically, with America.

All the time, there was the weight of my community’s expectations on my shoulders.

Slavery has never been abolished from America’s way of thinking.

Desegregation is a joke.

You get racism crossing the street; it’s in the very fabric of American society.

Through music you can become sad, joyful, loving, you can learn. You can learn mathematics, touch, pacing… Oh my God! Ooh… Wow… You can see colors through music. Anything!

I think that the artists who don’t get involved in preaching messages probably are happier – but you see, I have to live with Nina, and that is very difficult.

I think if I were over there in America, protest music would be more important. But I’m not going.

Music is an art and art has its own rules. And one of them is that you must pay more attention to it than anything else in the world, if you are going to be true to yourself. And if you don’t do it – and you are an artist – it punishes you.

There’s no excuse for the young people not knowing who the heroes and heroines are or were.

I feel more alive now than I ever have in my life. I have a chance to live, as I’ve dreamed.

This may be a dream, but I’ll say it anyway: I was supposed to be married last year, and I bought a gown. When I meet Nelson Mandela, I shall put on this gown and have the train of it removed and put aside, and kiss the ground that he walks on and then kiss his feet.

What kept me sane was knowing that things would change, and it was a question of keeping myself together until they did.

I think the rich are too rich and the poor are too poor. I don’t think the black people are going to rise at all; I think most of them are going to die.

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.

My love is like the wind and wild is the wind. Give me more than one caress, satisfy my hungriness. Let the wind blow through your heart for wild is the wind.

I had spent many years pursuing excellence, because that is what classical music is all about… Now it was dedicated to freedom, and that was far more important.