Top 40 Meshell Ndegeocello Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Your yes means nothing if you can’t say no.”

— Meshell Ndegeocello

Featured in: Boundaries Quotes

2. “Her beauty cannot be measured with standards of a colonized mind.”

— Meshell Ndegeocello

3. “God looks out for fools and babies.”

— Meshell Ndegeocello

4. “Any ideas of ‘other’ are complicated, and otherness is relative to personal ideas of ’normal.”

— Meshell Ndegeocello

5. “It’s hard being bisexual, omnisexual, multisexual, whatever you want to call it, when people have their agenda and expect you to just represent their agenda.”

— Meshell Ndegeocello

6. “My legacy is in my family, not in my work. For me. I don’t know about for other people. I try to forget a lot.”

— Meshell Ndegeocello

7. “No one knows anything for sure.”

— Meshell Ndegeocello

8. “I’m a true believer that unless you’re Prince or Stevie Wonder – and even Prince is showing that he needs help – not everybody can produce themselves. I’m definitely not that person.”

— Meshell Ndegeocello

9. “I’m becoming more and more apolitical – I think the most revolutionary thing you can do is just live your life and have a good time. Before they scoop you up on the street or you die.”

— Meshell Ndegeocello

10. “Definitely dub is in my body forever. I think I hear everything through a dub filter. Even when I play rock music, I play through a dub filter.”

— Meshell Ndegeocello

11. “It’s interesting to do other people’s music – that’s how I learned to play, by learning other people’s songs. It’s nice to delve into how other people got to where they are.”

— Meshell Ndegeocello

12. “I think leaders are incapable of the strength that passive resistance entails.”

— Meshell Ndegeocello

13. “We’re all just bags of bones and muscle and hormones; I’ll never understand what makes our minds do the things we do. It’s like that statue of the monkey holding a skull. We’re trying to use a thing we don’t understand to understand ourselves.”

— Meshell Ndegeocello

14. “Madonna is interesting. She changed music. She definitely did. She gave me an opportunity that no one else would give me, so I am very grateful to her.”

— Meshell Ndegeocello

15. “I joke that a person of color would never make a movie like ‘Midnight in Paris.’ Nostalgia isn’t so enticing.”

— Meshell Ndegeocello

16. “There’s no hierarchy in suffering. I think songs that are transcendent are the ones where everyone can feel something from it, you know?”

— Meshell Ndegeocello

17. “I love children. I’d prefer to be around children much more than adults, actually. And I like animals, too. I’m just really into beings who are at ease with themselves.”

— Meshell Ndegeocello

18. “My greatest influence is Jimi Hendrix, and if he’s been reincarnated, or if he’s looking down, sideways, or looking up, I just wanted to tell him that I love him and thank him for opening doors for me. I just wanted to make it beautiful for him.”

— Meshell Ndegeocello

19. “It’s funny, I think after you are a star like Sting and you no longer think you need any guidance or aid – it would be great to see those stars work with other songwriters.”

— Meshell Ndegeocello

20. “Sometimes people ask what it was like when I got to meet Mick Jagger, and I must admit that you just try and chill out and be your best self around anyone that you meet.”

— Meshell Ndegeocello

21. “Once you encounter people who are really testing the limits of kindness, that’s when you start to build up a shield and close yourself down.”

— Meshell Ndegeocello

22. “I watch documentaries for information. I watch films to be entertained.”

— Meshell Ndegeocello

23. “Children are born with their own optimism. They have a clarity and a simplicity that we can only wish for.”

— Meshell Ndegeocello

24. “Our leaders and Osama Bin Laden all claim to do the right thing in the name of God. I question that. I wonder if that God is worth the life of another human-being.”

— Meshell Ndegeocello

25. “I am here no longer just a vision birthed into this body I accept my praise, my blame, my joy, my sorrow I realize we are, in truth, the truth we seek God, perfect this very moment.”

— Meshell Ndegeocello

26. “I’m really good at melodic and sonic things, but I don’t really think I have anything to say. But I really enjoy the puzzle-making of taking words and adding a melody to them.”

— Meshell Ndegeocello

27. “I think all musicians should understand that you have chosen not to be a soldier but a musician.”

— Meshell Ndegeocello

28. “I find myself wanting to make music at the dining room table or in the bedroom – I’m kind of a mobile writer, so I sort of move around the house. But the attic is definitely where I can make the most noise. While everyone on the lower floors screams ‘Earthquake!’ But no! It’s just my bass!”

— Meshell Ndegeocello

29. “Music is like a lover that I can’t commit to, but I seem to always find myself in bed with.”

— Meshell Ndegeocello

30. “If I would not be able to create music, I would create art or something else. Perhaps cooking.”

— Meshell Ndegeocello

31. “I just try to tell a story with a song, and be able to try to transmit the emotion to you. That’s all I’m really trying to do.”

— Meshell Ndegeocello

32. “Music is my only guide. I don’t care if people pigeonhole me. Miles Davis is my hero. He covered Cindy Lauper and Michael Jackson, and he didn’t give a hoot about what the purists said.”

— Meshell Ndegeocello

33. “The blowing thing is something that you either have a predilection for or not. And I don’t have that thing. It was just unsanitary. I couldn’t do it. I am a complete germaphobe.”

— Meshell Ndegeocello

34. “Allow the artist to finish the piece of work before you critique it.”

— Meshell Ndegeocello

35. “You make a choice to make music or be an actor, and people automatically think they can have access to your life.”

— Meshell Ndegeocello

36. “I stopped beating up on myself. I stopped asking myself why I didn’t sell this number of records, why I don’t have corporate sponsorship. I just don’t buy into any of that anymore.”

— Meshell Ndegeocello

37. “Not to be a Bible-thumper, but there really is nothing new under the sun.”

— Meshell Ndegeocello

38. “I tried to be as positive as possible, because I have the same birthday as Michael Jackson. He is my cosmic brother. I love him.”

— Meshell Ndegeocello

39. “I feel that musicians are in a fellowship, and that fellowship is a responsibility.”

— Meshell Ndegeocello

40. “I’m pushing ahead on my own – you no longer need a large record company to make you a star.”

— Meshell Ndegeocello

41. “My favorite period is when we lived in the land of the three-minute song. The Motown thing – I thought they were genius in knowing that’s as much as a listener can take.”

— Meshell Ndegeocello

42. “I think secretly I’ve realized after my time on the planet that I have no control over what people feel about me or need from me, so I just have a more laid-back approach in my apologies.”

— Meshell Ndegeocello

43. “Yes, violence begets more violence, but historically this has been the way of the world.”

— Meshell Ndegeocello