Top 120 Nikki Giovanni Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “All mistakes teach us something, so there are, in reality, no mistakes.”

— Nikki Giovanni

102. “The tragic loneliness black women consistently face as we stand before judgmental others – sometimes white, but sometimes black; sometimes male, but sometimes female – demands that we have some wisdom, experience, and some passion with which to combat this abuse.”

— Nikki Giovanni

103. “You must invent your own games and teach us old ones how to play.”

— Nikki Giovanni

104. “A lot of people refuse to do things...”

— Nikki Giovanni

105. “There are some things we do simply because the doing is a success.”

— Nikki Giovanni

106. “No matter what else is wrong in the world a book will take you away from it.”

— Nikki Giovanni

107. “For most of my life, I’ve thought of myself as pretty cool.”

— Nikki Giovanni

108. “But nonviolence was never for the oppressor; it was for the oppressed.”

— Nikki Giovanni

109. “Violence is like money in the bank; it’s only helpful if you don’t have to use it.”

— Nikki Giovanni

110. “Facts are only tools to gain control over yourself and other people.”

— Nikki Giovanni

111. “It’s really just interesting to ask: why not? And see where that takes me.”

— Nikki Giovanni

112. “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

113. “If you’re a writer, the answer to everything is yes.”

— Nikki Giovanni

114. “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

115. “The South lost... and that is good... and that hateful flag needs to come down... and reparations need to be offered and if none of that can happen... well... let there be poetry.”

— Nikki Giovanni

116. “I think you always write what you love. Whether it’s your grandmother or gourmet cooking or mountains and rivers. Sunsets kissing the tallest building or chipmunks scattering off to bed. I like the quiet. And I like the sound of the quiet. I’m a mountain girl. I listen and make lists of what I hear.”

— Nikki Giovanni

117. “I think that, in reality, there is something wrong with human beings, and unless we are willing to face the fact that something is really wrong with human beings, unless we are willing to face the fact that somewhere in our imaginations we are evil, vicious people, it is not going to work.”

— Nikki Giovanni

118. “Poets can tell the truth as they see it. It’s the author’s story, the author’s voice.”

— Nikki Giovanni

119. “I spend a lot of time learning about bird watching.”

— Nikki Giovanni

120. “No one needs to teach you to be mean; we need to be taught to be kind.”

— Nikki Giovanni

121. “Writing for the gallery is something that a writer must resist no matter who he is. You know the writers that are writing for their audience because they write the same book over and over again with the sort of cute things their readership likes. Serious writers write things that compel them, new challenges, new situations, and a new landscape that they have not been in before.”

— Nikki Giovanni

122. “My work is a part of me and I know it. I have no reason to try to pick one part of me out from the rest. I only see my work, or rather I should say I see my work only telling my part of the human experience.”

— Nikki Giovanni

123. “All systems require myths for their longevity.”

— Nikki Giovanni

124. “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

125. “We believe ‘Peter Rabbit’ because Beatrix Potter believes it. You have to.”

— Nikki Giovanni

126. “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

127. “I don’t have a life-style, I have a life.”

— Nikki Giovanni

128. “Black Americans should be given credit for finding probably the perfect weapon; the weapon of the song. And that song continues. Most holocausts don’t, so they have this bitterness left over. The phenomenon of the world, as far as Black Americans are considered, is that we are not a bitter people.”

— Nikki Giovanni

129. “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

130. “Fanatics are, for one thing, boring and, for another, unreliable. They tend to burn out just when you need them.”

— Nikki Giovanni

131. “The catchword I use with my classes is: The authority of the writer always overcomes the skepticism of the reader.”

— Nikki Giovanni

132. “We look, most humans, for a way to be warm and safe; for a haven for our bodies when, once fire was discovered and clothes invented, when once we understood why the squirrels moved seeds around and what to call the plant the jaguar got giggly off of, when once we no longer worried about being eaten by other mammals or each other we looked for meaning with this life we were given.”

— Nikki Giovanni

133. “I always thought that would be really neat if black people ever got control of the United States we would, of course, tear down some of the statues because we just don’t like them... like all of Richmond would probably not have a statue standing.”

— Nikki Giovanni

134. “Writing is a conversation with reading; a dialogue with thinking.”

— Nikki Giovanni

135. “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

136. “I do not understand why any poet or writer would run for office; that’s a different sense of who you are. I’m just a poet. I am as truthful as I can be. That makes me an artist. I heed the people; I do not lead the people.”

— Nikki Giovanni

137. “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

138. “This country is a land mass that could be called anything, and for people to act like this is some kind of sacred territory is an insanity. It’s just a bunch of people trying to live together, and if we’re not going to be part of a dream of equality – a part of a dream of that which is the best of us, the idea that people help one another – if we’re not going to do that, then this land mass doesn’t any more deserve to be revered than anything else.”

— Nikki Giovanni

139. “I am always lonely for things I’ve never had and people I’ve never been.”

— Nikki Giovanni