Annie Lennox Quotes

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


2. Feminism is a word that I identify with. The term has become synonymous with vitriolic man-hating but it needs to come back to a place where both men and women can embrace it. It is particularly important for women in developing countries.

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


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


5. I would love to meet a dodo.

6. Ask yourself: Have you been kind today? Make kindness your daily modus operandi and change your world.

7. I wouldn't say that I've mellowed. I'm less mellow, perhaps.



8. I am fascinated by history and particularly the Victorian era.

9. I'm a female but I have a masculine side and I'm not going to negate that part of myself.

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


11. I'm just an ordinary person.


12. I didn't want to be perceived as a girly girl on stage.

13. I'm not particularly attention-seeking.

14. 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.

15. 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.





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

17. 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.

18. 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.



19. I've never been a social person.

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

21. I've had my share of dark days of the soul. I try not to focus on it too much so it doesn't get to me.






22. Charity is a fine thing if it's meeting a gap where needs must be met and there are no other resources. But in the long term we need to support people into helping themselves.

23. I've always tried to keep my integrity and keep my autonomy.


24. I have a lot to be grateful for.

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

26. I can't understand why the front pages of newspapers can cover bird flu and swine flu and everybody is up in arms about that and we still haven't really woken up to the fact that so many women in sub-Saharan Africa - 60 percent of people in - infected with HIV are women.

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





28. 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.

29. 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.

30. I'm from a working-class background, and I've experienced that worry of not having a job next week because the unions are going on strike.

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

32. I don't want to be owned by a corporation and obliged to make a certain type of album. I want to be free.

33. 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.

34. HIV/AIDS has no boundaries.

35. Money is a good thing and it's obviously useful, but to work only for money or fame would never interest me.



36. I have always been a very visual person and a keen observer.

37. Most women are dissatisfied with their appearance - it's the stuff that fuels the beauty and fashion industries.

38. 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.

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

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






41. People ask me so many questions.

42. Music is an extraordinary vehicle for expressing emotion - very powerful emotions. That's what draws millions of people towards it. And, um, I found myself always going for these darker places and - people identify with that.

43. I like where I live here, in London.






44. 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.

45. I love to make music and stay grounded.



46. 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.

47. The world is a heartbreaking place, without any question.

48. The general population still thinks HIV is something that came in the 80s and went away, or that it only affects the gay population or intravenous drug users.

49. I love to be individual, to step beyond gender.

50. 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.

51. If we value what we've inherited for free - from other women - surely it's right morally and ethically for us to wake up and say: "I'm a feminist."





52. 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.

53. I mean, I'm 48 years old and I've been through a lot in my life - you know, loss, whether it be death, illness, separation. I mean, the failed expectations…We all have dreams.

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






55. For me, pointing and clicking my phone is absolutely fine. People say that isn't the art of photography but I don't agree.

56. 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.

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

58. 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.

59. 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.



60. Women's issues have always been a part of my life.


61. I see myself as a traveller.

62. I'm shy, yeah. There's a huge industry at the moment of celebrity and it's really evolved over the last 10-15 years and, um, although I'm somebody that's in the public eye from time to time, I don't play that game too much. I don't like it because I find it very superficial - I just like to make my music and I like to sing. I don't really hang out.

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



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

65. I'm an only child, you know, originally. I'm not a child anymore, but I certainly tend to spend a lot of time on my own.

66. It's a very telling thing when you have children. You have to be there for them, you've got to set an example, when you're not sure what your example is, and anyway the world is changing so fast you don't know what is appropriate anymore.




67. I regard music as something that transcends the labels of gender, class or creed, which is why I think it's such a powerful medium. And as a fashion plate? I have to tell you that I've been given many opportunities to collude with the fashion industry, but I declined because I don't want to be a clotheshorse for anyone.

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





69. It takes a tremendous amount of faith every time I go into the studio. Music comes easy to me - melody, chord progression, no problem. That's something very simple, and I like to sit down and do that. But to actually literally write something important...

70. 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.



71. I think my daughters have a pretty healthy self-awareness but I can't speak on their behalf.

72. There are two kinds of artists left: those who endorse Pepsi and those who simply won't.

73. Even in the '80s when people were gay, it was still difficult for them to come out, whereas nowadays, 20 years on, I think, um, we have a far more open-minded society that embraces the notion of homosexuality, and I think there was this doubt about my gender, you know, and at the time it possibly was controversial but…they missed my message, if you see what I mean, because for me it wasn't about a sexual issue, it was more of a feminist thing.

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




75. Whatever you do, you do out of a passion.

76. Well I thought my time was over, but it's only just begun.

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

78. 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.

79. I want people to understand me as a person with views, not just performing songs.


80. 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.

81. I want to branch out. I want to write. I write poetry. I want to see my children grow up well.

82. Historically, the image of women in pop music has been so totally ornamental - sexual, but predictably so. It's hard to tell how far women's individuality has come in the past twenty years. Certainly, if you look at the pop charts as a measuring stick, you'd think it hasn't come far at all. But women do feel less like victims now than they did twenty years ago. At heart I'm a feminist, but I'm also a feminist for men. Men should be liberated from the roles that are foisted on them also.

83. 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.



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

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







86. I was perceiving myself as good as a man or equal to a man and as powerful and I wanted to look ambiguous because I thought that was a very interesting statement to make through the media. And it certainly did cause quite a few ripples and interest and shock waves.

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


What do you think of Annie Lennox quotes?


Feel free to comment and share this blog post if you find it interesting!