Annie Lennox Quotes

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.

You have to face things, have faith in what you do and go for it. Think, 'What's the worst that could happen?'

If someone says something unpleasant, I can't say it doesn't smart a bit. It always does. Someone can take a really nasty swipe if they want because it kind of feels powerful for a person to write in a paper and get that thing out there.

If you come face to face with some really challenging situations and tragic circumstances - you are going in there with a purpose. You are not going in there as a tourist.

As you get older, there will be a new challenge arising. What you thought you'd accomplished once, maybe the goal post has shifted and it's not what you're pursuing anymore, because you're not interested in that anymore, you know?

I enjoy multi-tasking, so I want to do a lot of different things. I want to keep all the plates spinning.

In the States, the HIV transmission from mother to child is almost completely preventable - the only mothers who really do transmit it are the ones who don't come in for care. If a mother in the United States or in Europe or in the UK comes to care and gets her medicines, she will have an HIV negative baby. Most people don't know that.

To try to help people have babies in a healthy way and to celebrate the process of delivering a child which will be healthy is, I think, almost the best part of healthcare.

I'd rather support the issues I truly believe in than give my vote to parties that court votes at the time of the election. I like to think that my vote strengthens the green foundation stone.

Success breeds the excitement to continue going.

Humankind seems to have an enormous capacity for savagery, for brutality, for lack of empathy, for lack of compassion.

The contrast of the world that we live in and the world that is here in Aspen and the world inhabited by women who have no resources, little or no, very few resources - huge disparity.

I've never been a social person. When I grew up, the other girls would all be combing their hair and exchanging lipstick, and I just couldn't do that group thing.

Fear paralyses you - fear of flying, fear of the future, fear of leaving a rubbish marriage, fear of public speaking, or whatever it is.

I knew that I wanted to be a singer/songwriter when I was much younger and, um, I've been able to, you know, to realize that dream and I'm very pleased with that...I want to branch out. I want to write. I write poetry...Music is an extraordinary vehicle for expressing emotion-very powerful emotions.

To be labeled as a strong woman when you feel vulnerable is a strange place to be, because then you're, like, "Oh, I have to be strong now. But I don't feel strong. I feel alienated. I feel isolated. I feel that things are very surreal, and they're not authentic, and this is all just very overwhelming."

I find beauty in a very independent state. It lives quietly. It's there to be discovered.

I stand on the shoulders of giants that have gone before me, in terms of affording people like myself, women, the access to democracy, the vote, medical treatment, education, everything that I've been given. It's all been earned. Therefore I feel it's incumbent on me personally to just contribute something, to add to a collective voice that needs to be here right now, to build it up to a tipping point, to make the world aware that women's rights still have to be addressed and that the word 'feminism' has been devalued and needs to be reclaimed.

I watch 'Mad Men,' I knit scarves, I cook and am very, very normal. Honestly.

I don't take myself as seriously as some people think, and I'd hate anyone to think I was preaching. That's the last thing I want.

I'm appalled that 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. It isn't about us and them.

It was very easy for me to dedicate myself to the care of mothers, help them have healthy babies, help them be healthy, help them in a place where they don't have opportunities. Success breeds the excitement to continue going. It's harder to get out of bed when you've failed.

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

There's good stuff and bad stuff, but you continue on. I'm not prescriptive - I cannot tell anyone else what to do with their lives, and I'm a deeply flawed individual - but this is it. We're all just living it and... bless us all.

I think life on the road really suits very egotistical men. It's set up for kings.

At times, I've been so absolutely terrified of what I was about to do, whether it was public speaking or performance. Whatever it was, sometimes it had me really, really shaking in my shoes, and I decided that I was going to do it no matter what. And, of course, the critic is there, and afterwards, there's this, "Was it good enough? Was it really all I wanted to say?"

You have to be quite grounded, and I don't know what that is. Sometimes, that means being vulnerable.

My first understanding of HIV and AIDS was like everybody else from my generation. In the mid-'80s, we heard about this, and it was terrifying, because we knew nothing about how to respond to it appropriately, and we didn't really understand about how the virus is passed. There was a lot of misconception about that.

You wouldn't find a Joni Mitchell on 'X Factor;' that's not the place. 'X Factor' is a specific thing for people that want to go through that process - it's a factory, you know, and it's owned and stitched-up by puppet masters.

If people like your music, you can't guarantee they're going to love you.

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.

Women empowering other women.They get the psycho-social support. They become part of a community.

I want to be true to who I am.

In memory, you can access something from the past, anything that you've experienced that you remember - it's there. Now, you might have a memento of it in a photograph or in a film or a building or some clothes that you wore. There might be something that connects you to this memory. But all of us are just all caught in this time, whatever that is.

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.

I like where I live here, in London.

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.

I stand on the shoulders of giants that have gone before me, in terms of affording people like myself, women, the access to democracy, the vote, medical treatment, education, everything that I've been given. It's all been earned.

You become really ugly when you become very superficial and self-obsessed.

My issue with the state of women became incredibly stimulated when I was visiting developing countries and it became obvious that women bore the brunt of so many things in society.

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

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.

Imagine living in abject poverty and not knowing anything other than that for generations. Or alternatively, imagine being born into a really wealthy family, but there was no real love. Everyone's living these extraordinary, interesting lives whether they know it or not.

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.

The person who inspired me the most was a friend of mine, Anita Roddick. I know that Anita wasn't known to be an ardent feminist, but she truly was.

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.

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

Poor countries are being forced to deal with an unprecedented health crisis without the means to tackle it . Governments can only show how seriously they are taking this crisis by taking immediate action to provide four million extra health workers and to grant those in need access to affordable medicines.