Nina Simone
You feel the shame, humiliation, and anger at being just another victim of prejudice, and at the same time, there's the nagging worry that maybe... you're just no good.Collection: Anger
To most white people, jazz means black and jazz means dirt, and that's not what I play. I play black classical music.Collection: Music
I don't like rap music at all. I don't think it's music. It's just a beat and rapping.Collection: Music
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.Collection: Teacher
I'll tell you what freedom is to me: no fear. I mean really, no fear!Collection: Freedom
I have to be composed; I have to be poised. I have to remember what my first piano teacher told me: 'You do not touch that piano until you are ready and until they are ready to listen to you.Collection: Teacher
Jazz is a white term to define black people. My music is black classical music.Collection: Music
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.Collection: Freedom
The protest years were over, not just for me but for a whole generation, and in music, just like in politics, many of the greatest talents were dead or in exile, and their place was filled by third-rate imitators.Collection: Politics
Greed has driven the world crazy. And I think I'm lucky that I have a place over here that I can call home.Collection: Home
You get racism crossing the street; it's in the very fabric of American society.Collection: Society
It's an artist's duty to reflect the times in which we live.
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.
To me, we are the most beautiful creatures in the whole world. Black people. And I mean that in every sense.
Did you know that the human voice is the only pure instrument? That it has notes no other instrument has? It's like being between the keys of a piano. The notes are there, you can sing them, but they can't be found on any instrument. That's like me. I live in between this. I live in both worlds, the black and white world.
Slavery has never been abolished from America's way of thinking.
I'm a real rebel with a cause.
As a political weapon, it has helped me for 30 years defend the rights of American blacks and third-world people all over the world, to defend them with protest songs. To move the audience to make them conscious of what has been done to my people around the world.
I flirt all the time. I like men! I don't think we can do without them.
All the time, there was the weight of my community's expectations on my shoulders.
I didn't get interested in music. It was a gift from God.
I would like a man now who is rich, and who can give me a boat - a sailboat. I want to own it and let him pay for it. My first love is the sea and water, not music. Music is second.
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.
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.
Desegregation is a joke.
I'm not a blues singer, I'm a diva.
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.
At this crucial time in our lives, when everything is so desperate, when every day is a matter of survival, I don't think you can help but be involved.
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 want to shake people up so bad, that when they leave a nightclub where I've performed, I just want them to be to pieces.
Sometimes I sound like gravel, and sometimes I sound like coffee and cream.
There's no excuse for the young people not knowing who the heroes and heroines are or were.
I try to swim every damn day I can, and I've learned to scuba dive and snorkel.
When I'm on that stage, I assume honor. I assume compensation, and I should.
What I was interested in was conveying an emotional message, which means using everything you've got inside you sometimes to barely make a note, or if you have to strain to sing, you sing.
From the beginning, it has been a no-no for a black man to touch a white woman.
I wasn't a jazz player, but a classical musician, and I improvised arrangements of popular songs using classical motifs.
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.
I think if I were over there in America, protest music would be more important. But I'm not going.
My daughter is in more competition with me. I never wanted to be bigger than my mother or to challenge her.
You've got to learn to leave the table When love's no longer being served".Collection: Heartbreak
I tell you what freedom is to me: no fear.Collection: Freedom
You can't help it. An artist's duty, as far as I'm concerned, is to reflect the times.Collection: Artist
What kept me sane was knowing that things would change, and it was a question of keeping myself together until they did.Collection: Knowing
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?Collection: Song
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.Collection: Life Is Short
You have to learn to get up from the table when love is not being served.Collection: Love Is
It's a new dawn, it's a new day...and I'm feeling good.Collection: New Day
This is the world you have made yourself, now you have to live in it.Collection: World