Top 120 Nikki Giovanni Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “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

52. “Educational progress is a national concern; education is a private one.”

— Nikki Giovanni

53. “It is not who you attend school with but who controls the school you attend.”

— Nikki Giovanni

54. “If you were a pure bolt of fire-cutting the skies I’d touch you-risking my life-not because I’m brave or strong, but because I’m fascinated by what the outcome would be.”

— Nikki Giovanni

55. “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

56. “Life is a process where people mix and match, fall apart and come back together.”

— Nikki Giovanni

57. “It is called education because it is learned. You do not have to have had an experience in order to sympathize or empathize with the subject. That is why books are written: so that we do not have to do the same things. We learn from experience, true; but we also learn from empathy.” A Theory of Patience.”

— Nikki Giovanni

58. “Why would there be a destination when life itself is a journey? You go not to get there but to be there.”

— Nikki Giovanni

59. “And you will understand all too soon That you, my children of battle, are your heroes.”

— Nikki Giovanni

60. “Now, everything I do, I do because I want to. And I believe the best is yet to come.”

— Nikki Giovanni

61. “The trip to Mars can only be understood through Black Americans. I say, the trip to Mars can only be understood through Black Americans.”

— Nikki Giovanni

62. “If you don’t understand your past, you can’t transcend it, you might repeat it, you don’t understand half of your life. Knowledge is what’s important, you know? Not the erasure, but the confrontation of it.”

— Nikki Giovanni

63. “Poetry and music are very good friends. Like mommies and daddies and strawberries and cream – they go together.”

— Nikki Giovanni

64. “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

65. “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

66. “Don’t want to be near you for the thoughts we share but the words we never have to speak.”

— Nikki Giovanni

67. “If you are sitting there waiting for someone to tell you how wonderful you are, you’ll never get anything done. Women need to get over being women. I’m tired of that socialization of women; that we are always supposed to be sitting around pleasing somebody.”

— Nikki Giovanni

68. “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

69. “You must be unintimidated by your own thoughts...”

— Nikki Giovanni

70. “There are things you stand up for because it’s right.”

— Nikki Giovanni

71. “And like an unfaithful mate, once a car has let you down you never sort of trust it again.”

— Nikki Giovanni

72. “Poetry is like air. It’s one of the necessary things. Everyone benefits from poetry. And as you know, poetry is international. There are only two things that are truly international, poetry and wine.”

— Nikki Giovanni

73. “I appreciate my my sleep In sleep my conversation is witty My home is dusted My office work is up to date The dog is even well behaved And food is on the table on time But then when I’m asleep I don’t have you to clutter and confuse My hungry heart.”

— Nikki Giovanni

74. “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

75. “We eat up artists like there’s going to be a famine at the end.”

— Nikki Giovanni

76. “I move on feeling and have learned to distrust those who don’t.”

— Nikki Giovanni

77. “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

78. “God knows it’s a sign of a really sick mind to see grown people, adults with responsibilities, wearing class rings.”

— Nikki Giovanni

79. “If I could come back as anything – I’d be a bird, first, but definitely the command key is my second choice.”

— Nikki Giovanni

80. “Sacred cows make very poor gladiators.”

— Nikki Giovanni

81. “Rage is to writers what water is to fish.”

— Nikki Giovanni

82. “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

83. “You’re only as good as your last book.”

— Nikki Giovanni

84. “If everybody became a poet the world would be much better. We would all read to each other.”

— Nikki Giovanni

85. “There’re two people in the world that are not likeable: a master and a slave.”

— Nikki Giovanni

86. “Style has a profound meaning to Black Americans. If we can’t drive, we will invent walks and the world will envy the dexterity of our feet. If we can’t have ham, we will boil chitterlings; if we are given rotten peaches, we will make cobblers; if given scraps, we will make quilts; take away our drums, and we will clap our hands. We prove the human spirit will prevail. We will take what we have to make what we need. We need confidence in our knowledge of who we are.”

— Nikki Giovanni

87. “Favorite poems are like favorite children. We definitely have them but we never tell as the others would have their feelings hurt.”

— Nikki Giovanni

88. “Hip-hop is a cultural expression – it’s embracing.”

— Nikki Giovanni

89. “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

90. “I’m told by my young friends that experience is much more important than books. Of course Ben Franklin had something to say about experience and fools, but even Franklin thought that a fool would learn by his experience. That has proven false in the modern world. Some people are simply unwilling to learn under any circumstances, which maybe, even then, wouldn’t be so bad if they weren’t so damned proud of it.”

— Nikki Giovanni

91. “To become a poet, the most important thing is to pay attention. The next would probably be to read; it’s so important to pay attention. It keeps you from being bored, and I might add it keeps you from being boorish.”

— Nikki Giovanni

92. “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

93. “We obviously need the truth. We’re living in a country of lies.”

— Nikki Giovanni

94. “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

95. “I think speeches and fruit should always be fresh.”

— Nikki Giovanni

96. “I am proud of the hip hop generation. They are good business people and, actually, good people.”

— Nikki Giovanni

97. “Follow your image as far as you can no matter how useless you think it is. Push yourself.”

— Nikki Giovanni

98. “The poet Melvin B. Tolson once said, ‘A civilization is judged only in its decline.’ That made sense to me. I would imagine the same is true for poets and tennis players.”

— Nikki Giovanni

99. “When younger, I thought one of the particulars of being “Homo sapiens” was to communicate. I have not learned not to, though I am cautious when I try.”

— Nikki Giovanni

100. “Photographers direct the eye toward a particular object. We who write, one hopes, are directing the heart and the soul.”

— Nikki Giovanni