Alicia Keys

The way I define beauty is individuality and wisdom, which I think creates a certain inner confidence. And not confidence in a way that’s only on the surface, but a deep-down knowing of yourself or settling into who you are.

They say that every child learns from their mother – it’s ingrained from babyhood.

You’ve got to have a good spirit on the inside. That’s what’s really going to make you look like you’re ready to rock the world.

I never thought love could be so deep, so wide, so open, so full, so elevating! Such a teacher! Thank you for teaching me, growing me, deepening me!!

I’m taking more time to listen to myself. It’s allowed me to be an aggressive bad ass, calling it as I see it

I first fell in love with the piano, I knew it was me. I was dying to play.

No woman gets an orgasm from shining the kitchen floor.

Have you watched Snow White lately? I get real funky about the classics; I don’t like (my sons) watching it. It’s totally sexist, misogynistic – she’s cleaning for seven dwarfs. There’s nothing wrong with a woman who chooses to stay at home with her family, it’s a hard-ass job, but it’s the way it’s spoken about.

It’s about being alive and feisty and not sitting down and shutting up. Even if people would like you to.

It’s pretty clear that if men were having babies we’d have different policies.

“From birth to age 18, a girl needs good parents, from 18 to 35 she needs good looks, from 35 to 55 she needs a good personality, and from 55 on she needs cash.

If you’re someone who genuinely believes that women don’t deserve or aren’t as much as men, you’re like the plague. On the big history chart, you’re the plague … it’s just pointless and deadly.

I view myself as being the average woman.

It’s work having a vagina. Guys don’t think that it’s work but it is. You think it shows up like that to the event? It doesn’t. Every night it’s like getting it ready for its first Quinceanera, believe me.

I never identified with the feminist movement in a strong way. I just kind of lived it. I didn’t politicize it. I didn’t follow any written rules to what it meant to be a feminist. I had my own sense of what was right and wrong.

I am a Woman Phenomenally. Phenomenal Woman, that’s me.

I’m not a feminist. If men were going through the things women are going through today, I would be fighting for them with just as much passion. I believe in equality.

First of all, as a card-carrying feminist, I am a BIG feminist, anytime I see women being stars – the stars that they should be, and being featured, and being highlighted, it makes my heart happy. Because it’s long overdue.

A feminist is a person who believes in the power of women just as much as they believe in the power of anyone else. It’s equality, it’s fairness, and I think it’s a great thing to be a part of.

I guess that maybe breasts are the most important part of the body when you think about it, I mean without them employers just wouldn’t know who to give the smaller paychecks to.

There’s a long, long history of women suffering abuse, injustice, and not having the same opportunities as men, and I think that’s been very detrimental to the human race as a whole.