Creativity Quote by Nina Simone

Prejudice doesn’t just slam the door; it plants a quiet saboteur inside the person it targets. Nina Simone names the most corrosive part of racism and bias with the clarity of someone who’s lived in its crosshairs: it doesn’t stop at humiliation or rage. It recruits your own mind to do the dirty work. That turn from outward injury to inward suspicion is the quote’s sting. The damage isn’t only social exclusion; it’s the psychic reprogramming that makes you audit your talent, your worth, your right to take up space.

Simone’s phrasing is deceptively plain, almost conversational, which is why it hits. “Feeds you self-doubt” treats prejudice like a system with an appetite, a machine that runs on stolen confidence. It’s an accusation aimed not just at individual bigots but at the structure that makes the target feel responsible for the harm. The subtext: oppression is most efficient when it convinces you that the problem is you.

Context matters because Simone wasn’t theorizing from a distance. She was a Black woman navigating elite musical institutions, segregated audiences, industry gatekeeping, and a country asking for her artistry while policing her humanity. Her career arc, especially as she moved from nightclub virtuoso to outspoken civil-rights firebrand, shows how that self-doubt can be fought: by converting private injury into public truth. The quote works because it reveals prejudice’s real ambition: not to insult you, but to shrink you.