Top 40 Chaka Khan Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “You’ve just got to follow your own path. You have to trust your heart and you have to listen to the warnings.”

— Chaka Khan

2. “I’m an extremely determined person. I’m very serious about what I do.”

— Chaka Khan

3. “My philosophy is familiarity breeds contempt.”

— Chaka Khan

4. “It’s time for those of us who have a voice to speak out for life, for love and for justice using the same media we’ve used throughout our careers.”

— Chaka Khan

5. “I control my life and I have never let success run away with me – I’ve taken it and ran. And the only thing that could threaten my stability is me – I’m my only threat and my own worst enemy. Beyond that, I don’t feel successful. I’m nowhere near where I plan to be as far as my goals.”

— Chaka Khan

6. “The bickering and fighting and hating that women do with each other – it’s going to kill us as a race of people.”

— Chaka Khan

7. “There is no perfect love – that’s something I’m very realistic about.”

— Chaka Khan

8. “If I wanted to fight to make a better world racially, I wouldn’t be in the music business. You dig, if I were going to be a freedom fighter music is the wrong field.”

— Chaka Khan

9. “Every personal experience of my life impacts my music.”

— Chaka Khan

10. “I love to sing. It’s the easiest thing for me to do.”

— Chaka Khan

11. “If I love a song, I make it mine.”

— Chaka Khan

12. “Your moment of clarity comes when you face your fears. Sobriety gave me back me – my life. Self-medication kills you slowly. You can never get a handle on that. It’s a highly destructive force that has to be dealt with on a spiritual level as much as a physical one.”

— Chaka Khan

13. “I want to give some positive messages and to empower some people.”

— Chaka Khan

14. “Painted faces, sun burnt skin, fixed expressions, smiles worn thin.”

— Chaka Khan

15. “I’d been in a vicious cycle and circle of people and couldn’t see my way out. So I picked myself up one day about 15 years ago and moved where I didn’t know anyone.”

— Chaka Khan

16. “I’ve been collaborating with Ira Schickman on some songs, and there will be many other, great musicians involved.”

— Chaka Khan

17. “It sacrifices people’s lives and their essences at the drop of a dimeI had a manager once say to me, You know you’re worth more money dead than alive.”

— Chaka Khan

18. “As you get older, though, you realize there are fire extinguishers. You do have an ability to control the flames.”

— Chaka Khan

19. “Walking through this life really is walking through fire.”

— Chaka Khan

20. “But really, we also need to learn how to love one another as women. How to appreciate and respect each other.”

— Chaka Khan

21. “Every personal experience of my life impacts my music. I can only give what I have. And when I receive, I give it back. I often fix it or color it differently or give it in my way, but thats what its about.”

— Chaka Khan

22. “Spirituality has played an amazing part. Its been paramount in my life.”

— Chaka Khan

23. “When I was in my twenties, it felt like I was riding wild horses, and I was hoping I didnt go over a cliff.”

— Chaka Khan

24. “America breeds ambition and while that can be a good thing, sometimes it’s not. Ambition also breeds competition and that can be a very bad thing. People become chronically preoccupied with competing and don’t know when to stop. It can become unhealthy.”

— Chaka Khan

25. “One of the album’s songs features Mary J. Blige, but I don’t want to talk too much about it yet. I think you will hear the music that’s been playing in my head when it comes out.”

— Chaka Khan

26. “My mother was into opera and my father was into jazz, so there was a lot of jazz in the house where I grew up.”

— Chaka Khan

27. “I like to work spontaneously.”

— Chaka Khan

28. “I can only give what I have. And when I receive, I give it back.”

— Chaka Khan

29. “If we could just see how related we all are, how we’re really all in the same place.”

— Chaka Khan

30. “Well. I’m probably not loving myself like I should, but I’m really trying.”

— Chaka Khan

31. “But me and my sister knew all the Doris Day and Frank Sinatra songs, too.”

— Chaka Khan

32. “I’d like to work on putting art programs back in schools.”

— Chaka Khan

33. “I’ve always struggled so much just to appreciate myself.”

— Chaka Khan

34. “If I pop everyone who calls me a diva then I’m going to spend the rest of my life in prison.”

— Chaka Khan

35. “I won’t become a household word, or achieve the fame I deserve in my lifetime because of the way I look.”

— Chaka Khan

36. “In my thirties, I felt I had hold of one of the reins some of the time.”

— Chaka Khan

37. “There are a lot of people I would have liked to have collaborated with, and would still like to.”

— Chaka Khan

38. “My mom took me to see Goldfinger. My mom took me to see To Sir, With Love.”

— Chaka Khan

39. “I have a lot of charity work I’m into right now, and selling my Chakalates – supporting that whole effort.”

— Chaka Khan

40. “I mean, I’m not unhappy, but there’s still so much I want to do.”

— Chaka Khan

41. “Being a singer is a way for me to get to a platform to do more.”

— Chaka Khan