Angelique Kidjo Quotes

You cannot be defined by your skin color, where you come from. The world is yours, embrace it.

Dream big, as long as you do it in sync with your truth, with your heart, your brain. And you are not hurting anybody, go ahead and do it.

As long as you are happy with your life, you'll have less problems.

If you don't trust the roots of the modern music in Africa, then there's hope for that music at all.

My legacy is not only about legacy, it's about how we as a human family learn to live together within our difference.

Don't say that you are a victim if you let somebody manipulate you.

Your color doesn't define your brain nor your soul. You can stand next to any human being and challenge that person as long as you use your brain.

As long as music of mine is not used to preach hate, or to bash women, it's okay for me. If it doesn't promote violence against women, drugs, this and that, use it, go ahead.

What we have to learn from the women of Africa is that every day is worth living.

It doesn't matter what challenge you face, the most important thing is, when you fall, how you rise and how high you want to go, where you want to go from that rise on.

Even the most racist person make a very painful racial comment, give him a smile. It's better than you take a weapon on him because he's just gonna go like, "Oh." He's just being stupid.

I never use someone just because they are great musicians. I work with people who have the same kind of feeling towards the music that I do, and the subject that I'm speaking of at that time.

There are people who refuse to say that Africa is a continent, but that doesn't remove the fact that it is a continent.

It is proven that when women are educated, the ability of the country goes up immediately.

Telling my story is to empower people to believe in their own power. We have so much power individually.

We cannot hurt ourselves just for the sake of it. When you hurt somebody you hurt yourself. Down the line, the ripple of it comes back to you.

I'm honoured when Africa recognises me

You can fall, but you can rise also.

If you're on stage and you're more concerned about your dress, and then you think that the public is accessory, you got nothing to do there.

With technology today you can sing like a frog and sound good. And then when you come on stage, what do you do. Some of those artists never toured, probably just hype.

I refuse for anyone to tell me who I am because I know who I am.

Doing an album is like having a business card; to show people what you do. The most important thing to me is the stage. I do albums because I love the stage.

What you do that makes you happy and that makes your family, the people that love you, their opinion counts more than anybody out there that is putting a category on you or defining you according to the old phantasmal.

I want to look at myself in the mirror at the end of my life and say I've done my share and I'm proud of what I've done.

Your brain is your greatest weapon. Connect it to your heart, and you can go anywhere.

I don't like the idea of something being pure. It means we have to be perfect, I don't want to be perfect.

Africa is not just about where you are born. For me, Africa is the whole continent; from south to north, to east to west.

You have to stand for something or you fall for everything.

I collaborate with people because their music talk to me as much as mine talk to them.

Music for me has been my breath, my backbone since I was a little kid. Anything that comes to my life, hard time or good time, I always find comfort in music.

The richness of Africa, culturally, is vast. That's the challenge that we have to face, because most of the time, people in the western world, their attention span is really narrow.

Education is very political, because when you educate the people, then you have a country that you can't fool anymore.

I'm a story teller. I really know how to tell stories of Africa.

I don't care about what people think about me.

I want everybody to be happy because, if you're happy, you are more open to other people. Don't let misery bring you down.

The music of the westerner comes from Africa, whether they like it or not. The majority of the instruments of the music, of the pop music, rock and roll, or R&B, hip hop, whatever it is, their roots trace back to Africa. So if you are black, white, yellow, or red, whatever you do, it doesn't matter, because your DNA is back in Africa.