Nina Simone: I'll tell you what Freedom is to me: no fear

<< I'll tell you what Freedom is to me: no fear.

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.

Greed has driven the world crazy.

This is the world you have made yourself, now you have to live in it.

I have to constantly re-identify myself to myself, reactivate my own standards, my own convictions about what I'm doing and why.

Life is short, you know? 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. >>

<< And now we got a revolution, 'cause I see the face of things to come.
Yeah, your Constitution, well, my friend, its gonna have to bend.
I'm here to tell you about destruction of all the evil that will have to end.
Some folks are gonna get the notion.
I know they'll say I'm preachin' hate, but if I have to swim the ocean, well, I would, just to communicate.
Its not as simple as talkin' jive, the daily struggle just to stay alive.
Singin' about a revolution ...
Because we're talkin' about a change ...
Its more than just evolution ...
Well, you know, you got to clean your brain.
The only way that we can stand, in fact, is when you get your foot off our back >>

Eunice Kathleen Waymon, known professionally as Nina Simone, of Tryon, North Carolina, alumna of Julliard (and denied admission to Curtis)