Top 75 Annie Lennox Quotes

I’m appalled the word feminism has been denigrated to a place of almost ridicule and I very passionately believe the word needs to be revalued and reintroduced with power and understanding that this is a global picture.

When I look at the majority of my own songs they really came from my own sense of personal confusion or need to express some pain or beauty – they were coming from a universal and personal place.

We all fight over what the label ‘feminism’ means but for me it’s about empowerment. It’s not about being more powerful than men – it’s about having equal rights with protection, support, justice. It’s about very basic things. It’s not a badge like a fashion item.

I have different hats; I’m a mother, I’m a woman, I’m a human being, I’m an artist and hopefully I’m an advocate. All of those plates are things I spin all the time.

I only want to make music because I have a passion for it.

I have a lot to be grateful for.

Music is a great vehicle for communications, and I have a certain platform. I have an opportunity and I have to take it.

Life is not quantifiable in terms of age, but I suppose in my fifties I am more grounded and more at ease in my own skin than when I was younger. I have a confidence that I didn’t have before from the experiences I’ve had.

Although I have lived in London, I have never really considered London my home because it was always going to be a stopping-off point for me, and it has been too.

I will go out of my way to avoid the shopping crowds and the extreme consumerism – I hate all that.

I used to be obsessed about how I presented myself. I didn’t want other people dressing me because I didn’t want to be treated like a clothes horse.

I don’t think feminism is about the exclusion of men but their inclusion… we must face and address those issues, especially to include younger men and boys.

I have always felt a little homeless. It’s a strange thing.

When you’re that successful, things have a momentum, and at a certain point you can’t really tell whether you have created the momentum or it’s creating you.

Men need to understand, and women too, what feminism is really about.

I think music is the most phenomenal platform for intellectual thought.

A lot of music you might listen to is pretty vapid, it doesn’t always deal with our deeper issues. These are the things I’m interested in now, particularly at my age.

I’ve never experienced chronic poverty, but I know what it’s like to live on £3 a week.

I also started writing songs because I had this burning activity in my heart and had to express myself.

As a creative person, you just put something out into the consciousness of the society you live in.

I’ve always tried to keep my integrity and keep my autonomy.

I like where I live here, in London.

Motherhood was the great equaliser for me; I started to identify with everybody… as a mother, you have that impulse to wish that no child should ever be hurt, or abused, or go hungry, or not have opportunities in life.

I don’t have clear-cut positions. I get baffled by things. I have viewpoints. Sometimes they change.

Life expectancy in many parts of Africa can be something around the age of thirty five to thirty eight. I mean you’re very fortunate if you live to that age. In fact when I went to Uganda for the first time one of the things that occurred to me was that I saw very few elderly people.

My issue with the state of women became incredibly stimulated when I was visiting developing countries and it became obvious that women bore the brunt of so many things in society.

I don’t have any interest to go to Israel. I don’t think I’d ever have a cause to go.

I’ve thought about what is an alternative word to feminism. There isn’t one. It’s a perfectly good word. And it can’t be changed.

The inner world is very potent for me – I don’t ascribe to any God or Jesus or Buddha – I just have a sense of it and revere it along with the natural world and human consciousness.

I’m not intensely private – I talk a great deal about my life and my work – I just don’t play the game to excess.

Humankind seems to have an enormous capacity for savagery, for brutality, for lack of empathy, for lack of compassion.

If I hadn’t been a singer, I might have been a photographer or an artist. But it’s singing I love. I sing all the time, and I feel really good that I’ve expressed myself.

I’ve never been a social person.

You just decide what your values are in life and what you are going to do, and then you feel like you count, and that makes life worth living. It makes my life meaningful.

There’s a lot of women’s organisations, but they’re all working separately. If you get people together, as a collaborative voice, it’s strong.

If you want to open a supermarket chain and put your face all around the globe, selling your baby and your dog, if it makes you happy, who am I to disagree, as the song goes. But it’s not for me. I’ve always tried to keep my integrity and keep my autonomy.

If someone says something unpleasant, I can’t say it doesn’t smart a bit. It always does. Someone can take a really nasty swipe if they want because it kind of feels powerful for a person to write in a paper and get that thing out there.

I think Scotland could take a stand in a wonderful way, ecologically and morally and ethically.

If people like your music, you can’t guarantee they’re going to love you.

Dying is easy, it’s living that scares me to death.

Churches, depending on their policy, can do fantastic work with people in the community.

I think people in Great Britain are a bit jaded sometimes.

Those in the developing world have so few rights – we take a lot for granted in the developed world.

Fear paralyses you – fear of flying, fear of the future, fear of leaving a rubbish marriage, fear of public speaking, or whatever it is.

The future hasn’t happened yet and the past is gone. So I think the only moment we have is right here and now, and I try to make the best of those moments, the moments that I’m in.

I love to be individual, to step beyond gender.

Nelson Mandela is awe inspiring – a person who really sacrificed for what he believed in. I feel truly humbled by him.

I see myself as a traveller.

Our ancestors are totally essential to our every waking moment, although most of us don’t even have the faintest idea about their lives, their trials, their hardships or challenges.

Whatever you do, you do out of a passion.

Actually, I’m quite a domesticated person. I love the little things of home.

Over the years, I was never really driven to become a solo artist, but I was curious to find out who I was as an individual creative person. It’s taken some time, but now I feel I’ve truly paid my dues. I guess I’m at a point now where I’m more comfortable in my own skin.

I understand what it is for a woman to want to protect their children and give them the best they can.

I want people to start thinking about what it means to be HIV-positive and to ask questions about that.

In a sense, the music business and I haven’t always been the best of bedfellows. Artists often have to fight their corner. Your music goes through these filters of record labels and media, and you’re hoping you’ll find someone who’ll help you get your work into the world.

I watch ‘Mad Men,’ I knit scarves, I cook and am very, very normal. Honestly.

It’s hard to tell how far women’s individuality has come in the past twenty years.

Motherhood was the great equaliser for me; I started to identify with everybody.

I have a calling in my soul, if you like, to try to make my life in some way worthwhile. What is the value of my existence?

I was never much of a one to win prizes… and certainly never placed too much value on their acquisition.

There is a big difference between what I do onstage and what I do in my private life. I don’t put my living room on magazine pages.

I am a communicator; that seems to be my natural place. And I’ll always be passionate about the world, because it’s so bonkers.

People ask me so many questions.

I would love to meet a dodo.

Making a Christmas album is looked upon by some people as the thing you do when you are heading towards retirement.

When you go to Africa, and you see children, they’re usually barefoot, dirty and in rags, and they’d love to go to school.

I was born in 1954. My parents were brought up in the war years, and life was hard.

I’m not a saint. I’m not an angel. I’m a human being.

One wouldn’t want to have the same dilemmas at 50 as one had at 15. And indeed I don’t. I have a very different take on life.

Fame for fame’s sake is toxic – some people want that, with no boundaries. It’s unhealthy.

I would like to see the gay population get on board with feminism. It’s a beautiful organisation and they’ve done so much. It seems to me a no-brainer.

I would say that although my music may be or may have been part of the cultural background fabric of the gay community, I consider myself an outsider who belongs everywhere and nowhere… Being a human being is what truly counts. That’s where you’ll find me.