Top 40 Janelle Monáe Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Perfection is often the enemy of greatness.”

— Janelle Monáe

2. “Embrace what makes you unique, even if it makes others uncomfortable. i didn’t have to become perfect because I’ve learned throughout my journey that perfection is the enemy of greatness.”

— Janelle Monáe

3. “Embrace what makes you unique, even if it makes others uncomfortable.”

— Janelle Monáe

4. “You are only as beautiful as the many beautiful things you do for others without expectation.”

— Janelle Monáe

5. “Silence is our enemy, and sound is our weapon.”

— Janelle Monáe

6. “Beauty is about enhancing what you have. Let yourself shine through.”

— Janelle Monáe

7. “I feel myself becoming the fearless person I have dreamt of being. Have I arrived? No. But I’m constantly evolving and challenging myself to be unafraid to make mistakes.”

— Janelle Monáe

8. “You cannot police me, so get off my areola.”

— Janelle Monáe

9. “Things might not go as planned, but at the end of the day it’s up to me to take the risks and do what I love most. And I don’t owe anybody an explanation. My journey is my journey.”

— Janelle Monáe

10. “When you realize it’s your responsibility to be a leader and create the world that you want to see, you have to do it.”

— Janelle Monáe

11. “I believe it’s time that women truly owned their superpowers and used their beauty and strength to change the world around them.”

— Janelle Monáe

12. “I love the mystery behind things.”

— Janelle Monáe

13. “I always think about the next generation and creating a different blueprint for them. That’s my goal: to let them know there’s another way.”

— Janelle Monáe

14. “It’s a big universe. To stay in one tiny place is doing a disservice to yourself.”

— Janelle Monáe

15. “I’m a believer that the more I’m giving, the happier I am, and the more beautiful my exterior will be.”

— Janelle Monáe

16. “I love great music and if it doesn’t move me I don’t listen to it.”

— Janelle Monáe

17. “Don’t get high off praises, and don’t get too low on critiques.”

— Janelle Monáe

18. “Redefine what it means to be sexy and what it means to be a woman. Showing my skin is not what makes me sexy. I like skirts and dresses just like everyone else, but I had a message I needed to put out there. It was up to me to show people and young girls there was another way.”

— Janelle Monáe

19. “Everything is about balance. You can’t work, work, work, work without any play.”

— Janelle Monáe

20. “One of my core values is to help redefine what it means to be a strong and beautiful woman in the music and fashion worlds and to empower the wonderful things that make us unique.”

— Janelle Monáe

21. “The colors black and white are my uniform, to honor the working class. People like my parents, who were janitors and had to wear a uniform every day. It keeps me grounded.”

— Janelle Monáe

22. “I take goldenseal, Echinacea and cod liver oil when flying to boost my immune system.”

— Janelle Monáe

23. “I feel like Harriet Tubman, except I am trying to free people through underground music, to free themselves creatively and inspirationally.”

— Janelle Monáe

24. “Part of what my music represents is to stand up and be the voice of those who feel like they are not heard and want to be treated with respect regardless of race, color, orientation – android, cyborg, whatever.”

— Janelle Monáe

25. “When I got into the music industry, I wasn’t focused on being the most famous artist or even getting a major record deal. It was just to make music on my own terms or create my own image, do my own hair, do my own makeup.”

— Janelle Monáe

26. “I always carry my classic black-and-white tux and custom-made George Esquivel saddle shoes.”

— Janelle Monáe

27. “I’m attracted to things that scare me, like ‘Psycho,’ my favorite Hitchcock movie.”

— Janelle Monáe

28. “Android is a new form of the other, but you can parallel the other to so many different types of people. Even if you don’t consider yourself to be the other, at one point in time I’m sure you felt like that.”

— Janelle Monáe

29. “Even if it makes others comfortable, I will LOVE who I am.”

— Janelle Monáe

30. “I’m not a politician; I’m an artist.”

— Janelle Monáe

31. “Honestly, I don’t believe in menswear. I focus on what pieces are most timeless, transcendent, match my lifestyle, remain remarkable, and command intriguing attention across the room at an art gallery.”

— Janelle Monáe

32. “I believe that imagination inspires nations. It’s something that I live by.”

— Janelle Monáe

33. “I love Fun. They’re great guys. They’re incredible artists and musicians.”

— Janelle Monáe

34. “Lauryn Hill, P-Funk, Marvin Gaye, Public Enemy – I have a very diverse palate for music. I can go from Judy Garland to Jimi Hendrix to Stevie Wonder to Rachmaninoff. I just love great music.”

— Janelle Monáe

35. “People in my family and camp who grew up listening to rap music love ‘We Are Young.’ I’ve heard it play at weddings. I’ve heard it in graduation parties. It’s a big idea and big song.”

— Janelle Monáe

36. “Children go with whatever makes them feel good – like if that’s the color green or orange, they do that with their clothes. As I’ve grown older, everything reversed. My music, my personality – onstage those things became my colors.”

— Janelle Monáe

37. “First, before I’m an artist, before I’m a celebrity, I’m a human being.”

— Janelle Monáe

38. “I won’t sit here and say I’ve never had a pimple, but I try to have a really great diet, you know, lots of vegetables and fish. And I think stress plays a huge part too.”

— Janelle Monáe

39. “I know what I like; if you go to my closet, I have at least four of everything.”

— Janelle Monáe

40. “Some songs you get. Some songs you may not. And I think that’s the beauty of art: to question and to ask, to understand the deeper meaning after two or three or four listenings.”

— Janelle Monáe

41. “I enjoy how women dressed in the 1920s with the shimmering jewels and rich feathers.”

— Janelle Monáe

42. “I’ve cried over string arrangements.”

— Janelle Monáe

43. “I don’t do a lot of collaborations that I don’t believe in. Actually, I don’t do any collaborations that I don’t believe in.”

— Janelle Monáe

44. “I have not lost any of my crazy, fearless, raw, soulful, eclectic side and I plan on continuing to tell universal stories in an unforgettable way.”

— Janelle Monáe