Acolytes Quotes

“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, Acolytes

“do the rosa parks
say no no

do the rosa parks
throw your hand in the air

do the rosa parks
say ... no no

do the rosa parks
tell them: that ain't fair”
― Nikki Giovanni, Acolytes

“Poems have serious business to do
They need to bring down presidents who
Start wars they themselves wouldn't go to”
― Nikki Giovanni, Acolytes

“All we can do, I believe, is take the love and give the love and try to remember who dreamed dreams of us. And try to be faithful to that.”
― Nikki Giovanni, Acolytes

“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, Acolytes

“Poems are not advertisements braying
For the good life
They have serious work to do
Birthing people burying people
Celebrating joy mourning loss”
― Nikki Giovanni, Acolytes

“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, Acolytes

“I know this it is difficult to grow up
it always was
it always will be

I know this nobody can tell you how to do it
You just make the same mistakes and
You just thrill to the same excitement

I know this Life is a good idea”
― Nikki Giovanni, Acolytes

“Of the many foundations upon which humans rest, words are probably the most solid.”
― Nikki Giovanni, Acolytes

“shame the bad
comfort the good
do the rosa parks
just like she would”
― Nikki Giovanni, Acolytes

“We need poetry . . . We deserve poetry
We owe it to ourselves to re-create ourselves
and find a different if not better way to live”
― Nikki Giovanni, Acolytes

“When arrogance calls it should always be poetry that answers thereby granting a stay to humankind's feelings of omnipotence. When love calls it must be poetry that answers bringing the sweet perfume of gentleness as our hearts pound and pound; when courage calls it will always be poetry that answers as we rise above ourselves to bring about a better thing. When war calls, poetry is the only answer. Poetry says No to destruction and Yes to possibility. Poetry is a good idea. A good friend. A good neighbor. Let's write poems.”
― Nikki Giovanni, Acolytes

“This is for equality ... men and women ... blacks and whites ... jews and arabs ... oriental-occidental ... dreamers and the blind ... brilliant and the dumb ... all equal because we have decided ... they are equal ... it's a good system ...”
― Nikki Giovanni, Acolytes

“It was wrong. It was wrong to pay the same dime yet have to walk to the back of the bus. It was wrong to have to pass a "white" school to go to a "colored" school. It was wrong to have Colored and White signs. It was wrong that Emmett Till was murdered. It was wrong that the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church was dynamited. It was wrong that Medgar Evers was shot in the back and bled to death in his own driveway. And whatever was not right could be, if not corrected, then certainly reproved by people with kinder hearts, better minds and the courage to speak out for their beliefs.”
― Nikki Giovanni, Acolytes

“Prison is not a good idea because it puts two people in prison: the prisoner and the guard. And the rest of us become inheritors of The Fugitive Slave Law, requiring us to turn in people who seek their freedom through the Underground Railroad or the overland express, or face the consequences of the full force of the law for not doing so. Newspapers, radio, television, and movies have made us afraid of our fellow citizens who are accused of being heretics, witches, christians, Jews, Muslims, drug lords, drug users, prostitutes, sodomites, anything somehow different from what we think we are or should be but not afraid of slum lords, union busters, corrupt and graft-taking politicians, insider traders, employers paying less than minimum wage, college presidents shutting down debate.”
― Nikki Giovanni, Acolytes

“Three days later when his body was found they wanted to bury him in Mississippi. I wanted him home in Chicago. I wanted the world to see what they did to my boy. I wanted Emmett's death to be the last death. I wanted Emmett's death to kill American innocence. I wanted Emmett's death to be not only the death of my boy but the death of innocence. I wanted Mississippi, I wanted America, to give us justice. And I prayed that I would live long enough to see it.”
― Nikki Giovanni, Acolytes

“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, Acolytes