Janelle Monae Quotes

I must be very clear in one thing... Being a pageant girl is not who I am or what defines me.

Each of us has a right to name ourselves as we will.

I am me. I have to define myself. I'm going to stand up at the back of the train and take control of my future.

You have to decide who you are and force the world to deal with you, not with its idea of you.

There's a trick to being whatever you want to be in life. It starts with the simple belief that you are what or who you say you are.

It is axiomatic that if we do not define ourselves for ourselves, we will be defined by others-for their use and to our detriment.

Depending on their fondest memory of you, most people hold on so tightly to their fondest memory they don’t usually let you be anything greater than that. And that’s one of the things I think I allowed myself to be a victim of earlier in my career. What I learned as I got older is I decide. I decide what it’s like for me, not other people. You can be whatever you’d like to be. You just have to choose it.

Don't let other people decide who you are.

Don't live your life to please other people.

I'm done living for other people. I'm done being a people pleaser. I'm done thinking about what people think about me.

There are two metaphors for Mario the person and not Mario the footballer. I think I am a man, but I don't believe I need to say it. But I could also be Peter Pan because I do things my own way and I am free. So, yes, maybe I should say that I am Peter Pan - although I am much more of a man.

I am not reggae, I am me. I am bigger than the limits that are put on me. It all has to do with the individual journey.

You cannot live your life looking at yourself from someone else's point of view.

If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

If you let society and your peers define who you are, you're the less for it.

I never let track define me. That's something that's really important to me.

But for everyone, I think, there is always a pressure to conform, and I guess as you get older you realize it's less interesting to do that. It starts with you, though, saying, 'I know what I like doing and that's what I'm going to do.'

Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one.

I do know one thing about me: I don't measure myself by others' expectations or let others define my worth.

I want to be defined by my own essence.

I don't think about what other people want from me.

To free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves - there lies the great, singular power of self-respect.

The world can't tell you who you are. You've just got to figure out who you are and be there, for better or worse.

I love people that willfully defy what you're supposed to be and create their own definition of their selves.