Erykah Badu Quotes

Peace and Blessings manifest with every lesson learned.

If your knowledge were your wealth then it would be well earned.

Society has a problem with female nudity when it is not .

. . ”—Badu pauses to get her words together; she wants this point to be very clear—“. . . when it is not packaged for the consumption of male entertainment. Then it becomes confusing.

I think a lot of people have lost respect for the individual, you know, the individual, the person who doesn't conform.

I strongly believe that the more positive my vibration is, the clearer my message will be. I keep my negative thoughts from infiltrating my pathway and my dreams. Other people's thoughts are none of my business.

So the most natural thing to me is to stay as pure to or real to or close to who I am as possible.

I grew up with all mothers, all women. I come from a long line of matriarchs, very strong women.

Vegan food is soul food in its truest form.

Soul food means to feed the soul. And, to me, your soul is your intent. If your intent is pure, you are pure.

I encourage breaking free of self inflicted holding pens.

I encourage the use of intelligence in every decision. I encourage creating.

Personally, I don't choose any particular religion or symbol or group of words or teachings to define me. That's between me and the most high. You know, my higher self. The Creator.

And I figured out that the reason I couldn't get through the day as well as I can now is because I had too many things on my mind, on my plate, you know, for one person to have. So I started to eliminate some of the things that were too heavy to carry and unnecessary.

You don't have to believe everything you think.

That's the moment I learned that the more you believe in yourself, the stronger the vibration touches someone else, and things begin to happen the way you dreamed that they would.

What does music mean to me? I don't think I would really be much without it, without it coming through me. It's my means of communication, my means of growth, my means of transportation from one point in my life to another.

My work as a doula also extends all the way to the end of life.

I sit at the bedsides of people who are passing on in hospices or nursing homes, for the people and families who want that kind of thing.

We lock ourselves into our own philosophies, our own religions, our own walks of life, and if we fail, we condemn ourselves and then we get sick.

I have advice for people - period - who are in unhealthy relationships: Follow your heart. It will get you to where you need to be. Sometimes it's hard, sometimes it's easy, the places that your heart takes you. But continue to follow it. Where the train leads you - you'll get there.

I'm not satisfied with the explanations I get from tv or from school.

A lot of people have dementia, which is great, because then they don't recognize me.

I'm more like an oven than a microwave.

I am not systematic at all when it comes to religion.

I just love life. And I'm not judgmental. And I'm a vegetarian.

My eyes are green, Cause I eat a lot of vegetables, It don't have nothing to do with your new friend

I don't know why, it's just what I feel inside, the thoughts that I sing about. It's just my truth. Sometimes my emotions can be mistaken for messages.

I really can't say what inspires me the most, because I'm inspired by just about everything. My feelings and relationships, my family, Scooby-Doo. Opinion of my work. Everything. Not just one thing.

The music business is motivated by money. Music is motivated by energy and feelings.

My fifth mother is Mother Nature - the things I had to learn on my own, the understanding I had to come to and still have to come to as a young woman, as a responsible mother, a responsible granddaughter and child. She teaches me willpower, honesty, and the things we need to heal ourselves from moment to moment.

As Erykah Badu, it has nothing to do with me, the way I look, my hair wrap, my style, it's about you and what you feel for my music. If I can make you feel like the way that people who influenced me made me feel, that's completion.

Honey isn't really that good for you.

What makes me furious, not just because we're in an interview, but I don't like when writers take your words and put them somewhere else, in the wrong context in their own article about you.

From then on, I realized this is what I want to do, what I'm supposed to do: Giving energy and receiving it back through applause. I love it. That's my world. I love it. I enjoy it. I live for it.

I think [ fashion philosophy] it's about your smile and your smell.

I love watching Rihanna in fashion. I like to see her take chances and risks. I like seeing Naomi Campbell in the forefront. They're both women who stand out and use their bodies as canvases to introduce this functional art to the world. They carry it in a way that is very inspiring.

I'm pretty mutable as a human being, period - if you put me on Pluto, I can figure it out.

Im a hip-hopper, and its something you live and do. It makes me angry that were misrepresented, that were being killed every day by one another, by the government, by the food we eat, the choices we make. It makes me angry because it doesnt have to be that way and it is.

My paternal grandmother gave me the courage to investigate things and not take things at face value or judge people by what I first imagine them to be.

Now my record deal helps me to do things for free or give more time to my community than I could otherwise.

Marvin Gaye is one of my favorite revolutionaries. He spoke from his heart, his mind. That's what I want to do.

What singing means to me, I never did consider myself a singer, I just let people watch me feel music and how it comes through me. I've worked on it and practiced a lot. I mean, music, I dance to it, and singing is just one way of getting it out of me.

I have a master plan as an artist. I've always said I'm not going to be punching nobody's clock. I will work as an artist to survive in this world.

I come from a long line of matriarchal women, and my greatest teachers were my mothers.

Whenever I think about funk music, it has a look - and that's how it sounds.

I'm a Pisces, so I'm a very closed-book kind of person.

Because you're responsible for [children]. You are there to protect them, not possess them. I tell them, "Watch me and you might learn something."

I consider my musical ability to be a gift from the Creator. It's not that I try to work hard or nothing like that, it's a gift, it was given to me, and I appreciate it.

Hip-hop is not something we do, it's something we live. It's the way we dress, the way we talk... everybody bobbing to the same beat. It's a culture, and you have to find your own place in that culture. Top 10 or Top 40 can't dictate that. They can only dictate what's marketable.

[The Land] is a film that just happens to be directed and written by a Puerto Rican guy with a black dad. It seemed like a very natural, human interaction between people who all just came from one common cesspool of bad luck.

I'm just being who I am and expressing myself as everyone else does.

I don't know... I've been doing it for 17 years now, so of course I've seen pictures and thought, "Oh my god, I wish I would've never worn that." Yeah, but I did! And it was probably because it was my favorite thing at the time - my clothes always have some kind of emotion attached to them.

Music and the music business are two different things.

When it comes to fashion or any high art, you have to have a combination of delicacy, along with taste.