Nina Simone Quotes

You've got to learn to leave the table When love's no longer being served".

I tell you what freedom is to me: no fear.

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

You can't help it. An artist's duty, as far as I'm concerned, is to reflect the times.

Life is short. People are not easy to know. They're not easy to know, so if you don't tell them how you feel, you're not going to get anywhere, I feel.

Birds flying high you know how I feel Sun in the sky you know how I feel Breeze driftin' on by you know how I feel And this old world is a new world And a bold world For me And I'm feeling good I'm feeling good

You have to learn to get up from the table when love is not being served.

Talent is a burden not a joy. I am not of this planet. I do not come from you. I am not like you.

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.

How do you explain what it feels like to get on the stage and make poetry that you know sinks into the hearts and souls of people who are unable to express it

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

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

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

This is the world you have made yourself, now you have to live in it.

The worst thing about that kind of prejudice... is that while you feel hurt and angry and all the rest of it, it feeds you self-doubt. You start thinking, perhaps I am not good enough.

Jazz is not just music, it's a way of life, it's a way of being, a way of thinking.

It's a new dawn, it's a new day...and I'm feeling good.

You don't have to live next to me / Just give me my equality.

I made wine from the lilac tree/Put my heart in its recipe/It makes me see what I want to see/And be what I want to be

I was always a politician from the day the civil rights people chose me as their protest singer.

I feel what they feel. And people who listen to me know that, and it makes them feel like they're not alone.

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.

To be young, gifted and black!

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.

I'm a real rebel with a cause.

I'm just human, I have faults like anyone

I know I'm different, but I don't think about it.

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.

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

It doesn't matter to me what is going on today because my music encompasses every kind of mood that exists in human beings. That's my stick.

Anything human can be felt through music, which means that there is no limit to the creating that can be done with music. You can take the same phrase from any song and cut it up so many different ways - it's infinite. It's like God... you know?

It's logical that people from bad times will reflect their feelings in their communication. Music is part of the communication. If you lived it, you can do it.

I applied for a scholarship to Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. I knew I was good enough, but they turned me down. And it took me about six months to realize it was because I was black. I never really got over that jolt of racism at the time.

It's a good time for black people to be alive.

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?

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.

What is love but a prelude to sorrow...with heartache ahead for your goal.

It's time to take a look at my failures and stop calling them successes. Now I can start working at something that can use me best.

Everything that happened to me as a child involved music. It was part of everyday life, as automatic as breathing.

I believe in racial memory too. I'm sure I've got ancient African blood in me that has something to do with what I am.

Desegregation is a joke.

Jazz is not just music, it's a way of life, it's a way of being, a way of thinking. . . . the new inventive phrases we make up to describe things - all that to me is jazz just as much as the music we play.

Once I understood Bach's music, I wanted to be a concert pianist. Bach made me dedicate my life to music, and it was that teacher who introduced me to his world.

Funk, gospel, blues is all out of slavery times, out of depression, out of sorrow.

How can you be an artist and not reflect the times?

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.

Jazz is a white term to define black people. My music is black classical music.

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.

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'm sorry that I did not become the world's first black classic pianist. I think I would have been happier.