Top 221 Quotes & Sayings by Erykah Badu - Page 2

I don't require sex for happiness - I need companionship. I need a partner I can depend on, that I can love and grow with.

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 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.

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 was born to make mistakes, I ain't scared to take the weight.

I'm only in competition with my last level.

It just works better for me to discriminate between which thoughts are mine and which come from elsewhere, before I even talk about them or express them - it helps to keep me focused on my path.

I know that I want to concentrate more on my inside-pretty than my outside-pretty, because thats gonna go away. But if your inside is beautiful, it never wears away. The light always shows on the outside if you are striving to be good inside.

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

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.

I'm more like an oven than a microwave.

I create my own calm and I keep my balance, because I know that it's not really me, by myself... The Creator always gives me the energy.

I just keep going. When the water's too still, I start splashing around and things jump out of the water.

Poor is the new black.

I'd rather see a person with a natural mind and processed mind than a processed mind and a natural head.

My hair is an aesthetic choice… At the same time, how you wear your hair is a political statement as well.

If we were made in his image then call us by our names. Most intellects do not believe in god but they fear us just the same

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.

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

Better think while it's still legal.

In the morning, instead of saying to yourself, ‘I got to wake up’ say ‘I get to wake up!’

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

If you invite negativity in, you have to feed it and hang out with it. Best not to invite it in.

I'm a recovering undercover over-lover.

I think people who vibrate at the same frequency, vibrate toward each other. They call it - in science - sympathetic vibrations.

Be you. Make sure you're saying something when you're saying something. It's important to sound like you, to feel like you, to be like you. Be you.

The Man That Knowz Something Knowz That He Knowz Nothing At All.

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.

Don't let anybody infiltrate your dream

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.

Time to eliminate things that no longer evolve me.

I encourage breaking free of self inflicted holding pens. I encourage the use of intelligence in every decision. I encourage creating.

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

I view my hair and clothes as functional art.

This pain to remain the same outweigh the pain to change... When you get tired enough is when you begin to want to sacrifice everything inside of you—the fear just leaves

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 wise healer endures the pain. Cry. Tears bring joy.

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.

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

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

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."

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.

[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.

The light always shows on the outside if you are striving to be good on the inside.

Following your heart also means eliminating the things that no longer evolve you.

I live in a queendom, ruled by a womb-iverse.

You don't have to believe everything you think.

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.

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.

Art is the absence of fear.

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

I was the bohemian in my family, the "this is my favorite shoe and I don't care if it has tape around it" kind of person. The tape could become a fashion statement. Or a political statement.

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.

Now keep in mind that I'm an artist and I'm sensitive about my sh*t

I don't plan how many people I work with. I don't charge anything. It's for my own learning, and I just enjoy being the welcoming committee. I became a doula by default.

Peace and Blessings manifest with every lesson learned. If your knowledge were your wealth then it would be well earned.

They play it safe, are quick to assassinate what they do not understand. They move in packs, ingesting more and more fear with every act of hate on one another.

I think the job of an artist is to be honest and fearless.

We as Black people have to tell our own stories. We have to document our history. When we allow someone else to document our history the history becomes twisted and we get written out. We get our noses blown off.

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.