A Quote by Erykah Badu
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.
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The Great Spirit made all things. He gave the white people a home beyond the great waters. He supplied these grounds with game, and gave them to his red children; and he gave them strength and courage to defend them.
We take things at face value, don't we? You form an opinion about something immediately, but you ought to step back a bit. Take in the vista first.
Perhaps I was always intensely curious, but my Columbia education gave me a framework and a perspective to investigate new things - things that could be put into a historical and philosophical lineage.
People value honesty. They value integrity. They value competence and courage and all those kinds of things.
I try to take people at face value and then beyond, taking them out of face value and out of the category of being Black, Latino, Asian, White, Jewish, Muslim or Christian or Atheist, none of that matters to me.
Fans, and people in general, look to people to take certain things on, and I'm a guy you can take at face value. I speak my mind.
People take things at face value on social media. Earnestness is the assumption.
Courage can't make you an artist, but without that courage, you won't remain one for long. First is the courage to be alone in the room where you create, and the courage to face that indefinitely, with no one to say if you are any good or not. Then, there is the courage to follow your work wherever it's going to take you. And the courage to fight for your work.
Open mind all the way. Because people have had eyewitness accounts, they've seen things, they swear they've seen things, and I tend to believe in people rather than - maybe I'm a little naive, but my optimistic outlook on life is to sort of be positive and take everyone at face value.
I was lucky. My grandmother stepped up for me and said she would take responsibility for me and a compassionate juvenile judge took a chance and gave me one. They were getting ready to send me away to do real time, but they sent me instead to a juvenile alternative day school. And I guess that was the beginning of my turnaround.
People have responded to my stories so well. They come up after a show and say things like, 'Your album really helped me,' or 'I have stage four cancer. I'm terminally ill.' Somebody told me it gave them the courage to die.
You need courage to be creative. You need the courage to see things differently, courage to go against the crowd, courage to take a different approach, courage to stand alone, if you have to, courage to choose activity over inactivity.
My third mother is my paternal grandmother. Her name is Viola. She gave me my sense of knowing why, or knowing why it was important to ask why. She made me understand that I don't have to believe everything I hear.
My nan taught me never to put value on possessions but to value family, friends and people. I buy lovely things and enjoy them, but they don't rule me.
I look back upon my youth and realize how so many people gave me help, understanding, courage - very important things to me - and they never knew it. They entered into my life and became powers within me.
I don't investigate things by writing about them, but let them build up inside of me.
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