1. “I move on feeling and have learned to distrust those who don’t.” – Nikki Giovanni
2. “Poetry is the most mistaught subject in any school because we teach poetry by form and not by content.” – Nikki Giovanni
3. “One stands, in fact, in awe of the Constitution of the United States, though it is an idea and not quite a reality.” – Nikki Giovanni
4. “And you will understand all too soon That you, my children of battle, are your heroes.” – Nikki Giovanni
5. “If everybody became a poet the world would be much better. We would all read to each other.” – Nikki Giovanni
6. “The more you love someone the more he wants from you and the less you have to give since you’ve already given him your love.” – Nikki Giovanni
7. “You have to use what you have in order to get what you need and the people can not be rich unless somebody is rich. The Hip-Hop generation has carried more people with it than any other enterprise Black Americans have had.” – Nikki Giovanni
8. “People are making the most unbelievable statements about the other based on that kind of insistence that the person who disagrees with you fundamentally can’t exist. These are political statements as well as biological and everything else.” – Nikki Giovanni
9. “Writing is a conversation with reading; a dialogue with thinking.” – Nikki Giovanni
10. “Poems don’t have to rhyme. Poems are about beauty and emotion; in other words poems are about feelings.” – Nikki Giovanni
11. “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.” – Nikki Giovanni
12. “Now, everything I do, I do because I want to. And I believe the best is yet to come.” – Nikki Giovanni
13. “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
14. “Don’t want to be near you for the thoughts we share but the words we never have to speak.” – Nikki Giovanni
15. “I am honest; I try to be truthful. I like people and wish us well. We are not always deserving of our own best wishes.” – Nikki Giovanni
16. “And like an unfaithful mate, once a car has let you down you never sort of trust it again.” – Nikki Giovanni
17. “To write poems, I think it’s important to do research, and research mostly is going to come from books, so all of your reading is potentially helpful to your poetry.” – Nikki Giovanni
18. “Some say we are responsible for those we love. Others know we are responsible for those who love us.” – Nikki Giovanni
19. “I hope that, reading ‘Rosa,’ people will remember their own family and friends and talk about what they did and did not do.” – Nikki Giovanni
20. “I think one of the nicest things that we created as a generation was just the fact that we could say, ‘Hey, I don’t like white people.’” – Nikki Giovanni
21. “Nothing is easy to the unwilling.” – Nikki Giovanni
22. “There are some things we do simply because the doing is a success.” – Nikki Giovanni
23. “Everything will change. The only question is growing up or decaying.” – Nikki Giovanni
24. “If you don’t understand yourself you don’t understand anybody else.” – Nikki Giovanni
25. “Young people coming up who are having difficulty with their so-called celebrity need to get back into their lives. It’s your life and you can’t let the fact that you do something pretty good take away the joy of it.” – Nikki Giovanni
26. “I spend a lot of time learning about bird watching.” – Nikki Giovanni
27. “My job was to be as truthful as I knew how.” – Nikki Giovanni
28. “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.” – Nikki Giovanni
29. “Violence is like money in the bank; it’s only helpful if you don’t have to use it.” – Nikki Giovanni
30. “All systems require myths for their longevity.” – Nikki Giovanni
31. “We are better than we think and not yet what we want to be.” – Nikki Giovanni
32. “We need to watch For the scared and the vulnerable One day it may be Us” – Nikki Giovanni
33. “We are strong enough to stand tall tearlessly, we are brave enough to bend to cry, and we are sad enough to know that we must laugh again.” – Nikki Giovanni
34. “We write because we believe the human spirit cannot be tamed and should not be trained.” – Nikki Giovanni
35. “Death is a slave’s freedom.” – Nikki Giovanni
36. “History is wonderful. We have so much we can learn if we would quit making ideology out of history, and just deal with what happened.” – Nikki Giovanni
37. “If I could come back as anything – I’d be a bird, first, but definitely the command key is my second choice.” – Nikki Giovanni
38. “VISIBILITY – You’ve got to find a way to make people know you’re there” – Nikki Giovanni
39. “We obviously need the truth. We’re living in a country of lies.” – Nikki Giovanni
40. “I don’t have a life-style, I have a life.” – Nikki Giovanni
41. “what we have here in this experience of America is a group of people who would not be downtrodden because they had a song to sing and we have a song to sing and there will be a new song for a new day but every day that there is a song we will sing it and our spirits will rise” – Nikki Giovanni
42. “I am always lonely for things I’ve never had and people I’ve never been.” – Nikki Giovanni
43. “Fanatics are, for one thing, boring and, for another, unreliable. They tend to burn out just when you need them.” – Nikki Giovanni
44. “I don’t mind the failure but I can’t imagine that I’d forgive myself if I didn’t try.” – Nikki Giovanni
45. “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.” – Nikki Giovanni
46. “Educational progress is a national concern; education is a private one.” – Nikki Giovanni
47. “You’re As Good As Anybody Else, You’ve Got A Place Here Too” – Nikki Giovanni
48. “I am so hip even my errors are correct.” – Nikki Giovanni
49. “The main advantage about being over thirty is you no longer have to pretend you have a date on Friday night or even, lo and behold, that you want one. You can now easily say to yourself, “I hope no one wants to ask me to do anything because I am so looking forward to a hot tub and a midnight snack.” – Nikki Giovanni
50. “The poet can only write the poems; it takes the reader to complete the meaning.” – Nikki Giovanni
51. “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.” – Nikki Giovanni
52. “There are things you stand up for because it’s right.” – Nikki Giovanni
53. “I really don’t think life is about the I-could-have-beens. Life is only about the I-tried-to-do. I don’t mind the failure but I can’t imagine that I’d forgive myself if I didn’t try.” – Nikki Giovanni
54. “You must be unintimidated by your own thoughts because if you write with someone looking over you shoulder, you’ll never write.” – Nikki Giovanni
55. “White people really deal more with God and black people with Jesus.” – Nikki Giovanni
56. “I had a really nice childhood; I had great parents. I earned my allowance by washing dishes, and in the summer I earned my allowance by working in daddy’s garden.” – Nikki Giovanni
57. “The ability to take pride in your own work is one of the hallmarks of sanity.” – Nikki Giovanni
58. “A lot of people resist transition and therefore never allow themselves to enjoy who they are. Embrace the change, no matter what it is; once you do, you can learn about the new world you’re in and take advantage of it.” – Nikki Giovanni
59. “Mistakes are a fact of life: It is the response to the error that counts.” – Nikki Giovanni
60. “I am totally fascinated by people and our history as I understand and continue to explore it. People have so much to give and so far to go and yet we have given and gone a great distance. It’s really just interesting to ask: why not? And see where that takes me.” – Nikki Giovanni
61. “We are less lonely when we connect. Art is connection.” – Nikki Giovanni
62. “Favorite poems are like favorite children. We definitely have them but we never tell as the others would have their feelings hurt.” – Nikki Giovanni
63. “I appreciate and enjoy my age.” – Nikki Giovanni
64. “If now isn’t a good time for the truth I don’t see when we’ll get to it.” – Nikki Giovanni
65. “Sacred cows make very poor gladiators.” – Nikki Giovanni
66. “We eat up artists like there’s going to be a famine at the end.” – Nikki Giovanni
67. “A lot of people refuse to do things…” – Nikki Giovanni
68. “The unwillingness to try is worse than any failure.” – Nikki Giovanni
69. “You’re only as good as your last book.” – Nikki Giovanni
70. “She knows who she is, because she knows who she isn’t.” – Nikki Giovanni
71. “We cannot leave it to history as a discipline nor to sociology nor science nor economics to tell the story of our people.” – Nikki Giovanni
72. “I’m just a poet. I only have words. So the words I want to share are: Thug Life. . . . I too am a thug.” – Nikki Giovanni
73. “I want to be clear about this. If you wrote from experience, you’d get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy.” – Nikki Giovanni
74. “Just as nature abhors a vacuum, humans resist change. Change will occur; vacuums will be filled.” – Nikki Giovanni
75. “Life is a process where people mix and match, fall apart and come back together.” – Nikki Giovanni
76. “Facts are only tools to gain control over yourself and other people.” – Nikki Giovanni
77. “I would put books on par with chocolate, because a good book is delicious.” – Nikki Giovanni
78. “There is always something to do. There are hungry people to feed, naked people to clothe, sick people to comfort and make well. And while I don’t expect you to save the world I do think it’s not asking too much for you to love those with whom you sleep, share the happiness of those whom you call friend, engage those among you who are visionary and remove from your life those who offer you depression, despair and disrespect.” – Nikki Giovanni
79. “If you don’t understand yourself, you don’t understand anybody else.” – Nikki Giovanni
80. “No matter what else is wrong in the world a book will take you away from it.” – Nikki Giovanni
81. “I love you because no two snowflakes are alike, and it is possible, if you stand tippy-toe, to walk between the raindrops.” – Nikki Giovanni
82. “You must invent your own games and teach us old ones how to play.” – Nikki Giovanni
83. “If I can’t have what I want then my job is to want what I’ve got and be satisfied that at least there is something more to want.” – Nikki Giovanni
84. “It’s really just interesting to ask: why not? And see where that takes me.” – Nikki Giovanni
85. “Love is the offspring of spiritual affinity and unless that affinity is created in a moment, it will not be created for years or even generations.” – Nikki Giovanni
86. “In order to have a happy ending, in order to be triumphant, in order to be heroic, you have to tell your own story. The women’s movement knows that; black people know that; brown people know that; yellow people know that. You have to be able to tell your own story in order to show that you are worthy – that you belong.” – Nikki Giovanni
87. “Life is a marvelous, transitory adventure.” – Nikki Giovanni
88. “I always loved English because whatever human beings are, we are storytellers. It is our stories that give a light to the future. When I went to college I became a history major because history is such a wonderful story of who we think we are. English is much more a story of who we really are.” – Nikki Giovanni
89. “Why would there be a destination when life itself is a journey? You go not to get there but to be there.” – Nikki Giovanni
90. “Follow your image as far as you can no matter how useless you think it is. Push yourself.” – Nikki Giovanni
91. “But nonviolence was never for the oppressor; it was for the oppressed.” – Nikki Giovanni
92. “All mistakes teach us something, so there are, in reality, no mistakes.” – Nikki Giovanni
93. “If you’re a writer, the answer to everything is yes.” – Nikki Giovanni
94. “For most of my life, I’ve thought of myself as pretty cool.” – Nikki Giovanni
95. “God knows it’s a sign of a really sick mind to see grown people, adults with responsibilities, wearing class rings.” – Nikki Giovanni
96. “We love because it’s the only true adventure.” – Nikki Giovanni
97. “Deal with yourself as a individual worthy of respect, and make everyone else deal with you the same way.” – Nikki Giovanni
98. “Who I am really keeps surprising me.” – Nikki Giovanni
99. “What’s the difference between dragging a black man behind a truck in Jasper, Texas, and beating a white boy to death in Wyoming because he’s gay?” – Nikki Giovanni
100. “I hope I die warmed by the life I tried to live.” – Nikki Giovanni
101. “Everybody that loves freedom loves Harriet Tubman because she was determined not only to be free, but to make free as many people as she could.” – Nikki Giovanni
102. “Rage is to writers what water is to fish.” – Nikki Giovanni
103. “No one needs to teach you to be mean; we need to be taught to be kind.” – Nikki Giovanni
104. “Show me someone not full of herself and I’ll show you a hungry person.” – Nikki Giovanni
105. “Once you know who you are, you don’t have to worry anymore.” – Nikki Giovanni
106. “the world is not a pleasant place to be without someone to hold and be held by.” – Nikki Giovanni
107. “We prove the human spirit will prevail. We will take what we have to make what we need.” – Nikki Giovanni