Top 49 Quotes & Sayings by Angelique Kidjo

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

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

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.

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

I am a storyteller with my music. And my story, nobody gonna tell it for me.

Don't let anyone define and decide for you fate.

For me, from the point of view of my life, I've been impacted by women that taught me that, as a woman, my body is a sanctuary, that whoever I invite in my body, I have to be clear in that invitation.

As far as I'm concerned, no human being should be, absolutely not, put in the category of color.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

If you love music, you have to be the one that opens doors. You have to be the one that build bridge on which everybody can be free to walk on. I know that that's my mission.

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.

Don't let misery bring you down.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

If everybody can be happy with what they achieve with their life, this world would be a better place.

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.

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

You can fall, but you can rise also.

From the moment you are clear in your vision of yourself and how you project that vision in your family, your community and in the world, that's all that matters.

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

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.

You cannot transform the society of people if the people are not part of the change.

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 don't care about skin the color, everybody is a human being. Beneath every skin color, you bleed red. That's just the bottom line of the truth.

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

Everyone wins when children - and especially girls – have access to education. An educated girl is likely to increase her personal earning potential and prepare herself for a productive and fulfilling life, as well as reduce poverty in the whole community. Investing in girls' education also helps delay early marriage and parenthood. Our booming economies in Africa need more female engineers, teachers and doctors to prosper and sustain growth.

I’m honoured when Africa recognises me

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.

Education is not something that the government invests in. Because if you invest in education, no politician can come and tell you something that doesn't make sense.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Don't let anyone define you from what you live through and everything that they think you stand for. Just be proud of who you are.

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.