Annie Lennox's Quotes

I'm not particularly attention-seeking.

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.

I've never been a social person.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

People ask me so many questions.

The word feminism needs to be taken back. It needs to be reclaimed in a way that is inclusive of men.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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'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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

The world is a heartbreaking place, without any question.

HIV/AIDS has no boundaries.

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

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.

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.

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. '

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.

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.

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 have a lot to be grateful for.

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

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

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

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

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

Whatever you do, you do out of a passion.

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 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.

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

The law has no power over heroes.

When a person is found less guilty than he is suspected, he is concluded more innocent than he really is.