Nina Simone (1933–2003) was an American singer, songwriter, and civil rights activist known for her powerful voice and socially conscious music. Born Eunice Kathleen Waymon in North Carolina, she began her career as a classical pianist before transitioning to jazz and popular music. Simone’s distinctive contralto voice and emotional depth made her a unique figure in the music industry. She used her platform to address issues of racial injustice and civil rights, producing iconic songs like “Mississippi Goddam” and “To Be Young, Gifted and Black.” Despite facing personal and professional challenges, Simone’s influence on music and activism was profound. Her induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2018 cemented her legacy as a pioneering artist and advocate for social change. Nina Simone’s music continues to inspire and resonate with audiences around the world.

Nina Simone Quotes

1. “I tell you what freedom is to me: no fear.”
— Nina Simone

2. “You have to learn to get up from the table when love is not being served.”
— Nina Simone

3. “I’m a real rebel with a cause.”
— Nina Simone

4. “Jazz is not just music, it’s a way of life, it’s a way of being, a way of thinking.”
— Nina Simone

5. “To be young, gifted and black!”
— Nina Simone

6. “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.”
— Nina Simone

7. “What kept me sane was knowing that things would change, and it was a question of keeping myself together until they did.”
— Nina Simone

8. “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.”
— Nina Simone

9. “You use up everything you’ve got trying to give everybody what they want.”
— Nina Simone

10. “It was always Marx, Lenin, and revolution – real girl’s talk.”
— Nina Simone

11. “This is the world you have made yourself, now you have to live in it.”
— Nina Simone

12. “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.”
— Nina Simone

13. “You can’t help it. An artist’s duty, as far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times.”
— Nina Simone

14. “I was always a politician from the day the civil rights people chose me as their protest singer.”
— Nina Simone

15. “There’s no excuse for the young people not knowing who the heroes and heroines are or were.”
— Nina Simone

16. “Slavery has never been abolished from America’s way of thinking.”
— Nina Simone

17. “Having as little to do with human beings as possible – in some weird way, I’m at peace.”
— Nina Simone

18. “I’m just human, I have faults like anyone.”
— Nina Simone

19. “Talent is a burden not a joy. I am not of this planet. I do not come from you. I am not like you.”
— Nina Simone

20. “How can you be an artist and not reflect the times?”
— Nina Simone

21. “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.”
— Nina Simone

22. “I feel more alive now than I ever have in my life. I have a chance to live, as I’ve dreamed.”
— Nina Simone

23. “I don’t like drug addicts and she sounds like a cat.”
— Nina Simone

24. “I have to constantly re-identify myself to myself, reactivate my own standards, my own convictions about what I’m doing and why.”
— Nina Simone

25. “I don’t like rap music at all. I don’t think it’s music. It’s just a beat and rapping.”
— Nina Simone

26. “Music is a gift and a burden I’ve had since I can remember who I was.”
— Nina Simone

27. “Jazz is a white term to define black people. My music is black classical music.”
— Nina Simone

28. “That is why we fly from the inner void, since God might steal into it. It is not the pursuit of pleasure and the aversion for effort which causes sin, but fear of God. We know that we cannot see him face to face without dying, and we do not want to die.”
— Nina Simone

29. “I would like you to know, I am a doctor of music.”
— Nina Simone

30. “Cause your mama’s name was lonely, and your daddy’s name was pain. And they called you little sorrow, cus you’ll never love again. You ain’t got no one to hold you. You ain’t got no one to care. if you’d only understand it. nobody wants you anywhere.”
— Nina Simone

31. “Greed has driven the world crazy. And I think I’m lucky that I have a place over here that I can call home.”
— Nina Simone

32. “I look forward to doing my own show, not someone else’s. That’s always been my dream.”
— Nina Simone

33. “I’m sorry that I did not become the world’s first black classic pianist. I think I would have been happier.”
— Nina Simone

34. “The allusion was that I was actually naked. I loved that. It always, kind of shocked people enough that they became mine immediately.”
— Nina Simone

35. “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.”
— Nina Simone

36. “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.”
— Nina Simone

37. “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.”
— Nina Simone

38. “Everything that happened to me as a child involved music. It was part of everyday life, as automatic as breathing.”
— Nina Simone

39. “To most white people, jazz means black and jazz means dirt, and that’s not what I play. I play black classical music.”
— Nina Simone

40. “Sometimes I sound like gravel and sometimes I sound like coffee and cream.”
— Nina Simone

41. “I came to expect despair every time I set foot in my own country, and I was never disappointed.”
— Nina Simone

42. “I don’t like to go to strange places. I was in Italy for about five hours on my way to Africa.”
— Nina Simone

43. “They don’t know that I’m dead, and my ghost is holding on.”
— Nina Simone

44. “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.”
— Nina Simone

45. “Every day has its emotional difficulties. I miss my mother whether I’m singing her music or not.”
— Nina Simone

46. “Desegregation is a joke.”
— Nina Simone

47. “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.”
— Nina Simone

48. “Music has been a burden and a joy for as long as I can remember.”
— Nina Simone

49. “I think if I were over there in America, protest music would be more important. But I’m not going.”
— Nina Simone

50. “I feel what they feel. And people who listen to me know that, and it makes them feel like they’re not alone.”
— Nina Simone

51. “I am just one of the people who is sick of the social order, sick of the establishment, sick to my soul of it all. To me, America’s society is nothing but a cancer, and it must be exposed before it can be cured. I am not the doctor to cure it. All I can do is expose the sickness.”
— Nina Simone

52. “I try to swim every damn day I can, and I’ve learned to scuba dive and snorkel.”
— Nina Simone

53. “It’s a good time for black people to be alive.”
— Nina Simone

54. “I am particular about the seating of the audience – also about how much money they pay – but most of all where they are seated. If I am going to sing something intimate, who am I going to sing it to?”
— Nina Simone

55. “I demand perfection in what I do, and I practice very hard before I give a concert-sometimes three to six hours a day.”
— Nina Simone

56. “There’s no excuse for the young…”
— Nina Simone

57. “I was not reluctant to become a singer. Singing has been an activity I’ve done my whole life, without thought.”
— Nina Simone

58. “From the beginning, it has been a no-no for a black man to touch a white woman.”
— Nina Simone

59. “My job is not done. I address my songs now to the third world. I am popular all over Asia and Africa and the Middle East, not to speak of South Africa, where I’m trying to go to see Nelson Mandela.”
— Nina Simone

60. “Since I was three I’ve been playing the piano. I’ve been onstage. My mother is an Evangelist and I used to play the piano at her revival meetings.”
— Nina Simone

61. “I don’t like to go to strange places.”
— Nina Simone

62. “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.”
— Nina Simone