Best 129 quotes of John Legend on MyQuotes

A just society is not one built on fear or repression or vengeance or exclusion, but one built on love. Love for our families. Love for our neighbors. Love for the least among us. Love for those who look different or worship differently. Love for those we don't even know.

Anybody under the age of forty knows hip-hop, gospel and R&B pretty well, and it's all a part of what we consider to be 'black music.' There is a natural synergy between the three.

Artists in general never stay in the same place, we keep growing. It's still you, you still have that core that you always had, but you work with new people and hear new things.

As a young black boy, it made me proud to see black leaders that did something amazing and made the world change.

At the end of the day, there's only a few major stars in the music business, and then there's all these people that are aspiring to be that.

Black people invented jazz. But this story [in La La Land] wasn't ever claiming to be that. It's just a story about two people from one writer's point of view.

Critics like to describe and categorize things, and categories often have a way of limiting people.

Even if you can sing or even if you can write a song, it takes a lot of determination, it takes some kind of thick skin, because you got to persevere despite the fact that people tell you you shouldn't do this or you shouldn't do that or you're not good enough or your style's too different. I've heard all of that stuff.

Every artist wants some sort of feedback, because you make this music and you hope people love it and you want to hear if they love it and what they love about it, what their favorite song is, what they think the next single should be. I like to hear those things.

Experience is a great teacher.

Fear. People are afraid of talking about their fears and insecurities. They're afraid of expressing emotion beyond anger, dominance, or power, and they're afraid of getting in touch with their feminine side.

For me, no matter how much money you want to make off of singing, no matter what kind of fame you want to make, achieve, the most important thing to me is making music that you're proud of, making music that comes from you, comes from an authentic place in you.

For me there's insecurity when you're releasing an album because you spend all of this time working on that one thing and then once it's done, it's done. After you put it out there to the public you never know which songs are going to work or even if the album is going to work as a whole so there is a little bit of nervousness around predicting what the numbers will be and if it's going to be well-received.

Happy that New York passed marriage equality tonight. A victory for human rights. Progress.

Hip-hop and R&B are especially fertile bases of collaboration. It always makes good records and good music.

I always felt that rap didn't cause crime; it just reflected it.

I always saw myself as a singer-songwriter, a solo-artist, that's why working with other artists was never satisfying for me.

I believed in myself and I am a firm believer you have to think the things you want and visualize.

I care more about the fans in general, just making sure they enjoy what I do. And then also I kind of had this kind of ideal of the kind of music I want to make and what I'm aiming for kind of creatively and just the quality of the music that I'm trying to make. And I have that in my head.

I do believe that part of us ending racism is us seeing each other's humanity and learning to love each other, even if we look different or worship differently or live differently.

I don't get to listen to music for fun very often; a lot of what I'm hearing is for work and isn't released yet.

I don't feel like that many musicians are competitive with each other.

I don't like going to football games. I like watching them on television. When you go to a game, it's hard to focus. There's so much going on, and it's cold. I'd rather sit and watch it and get replays and commentary.

I don't love the idea of three superstars coming together to form a dream team, I'd rather teams are built more organically, just as a fan it's more interesting to see.

I don't really marinate in anybody's album because I don't really want to sound like anybody else when I put my album out. So I'd rather not even be tempted to listen to a bunch of other stuff with any degree of emersion in it, cause I just don't want to sound like anything else, so I kinda focus on my own music.

I don't think I'm craving any more fame. But success and being recognized for making great work all around the world, I think it's a great thing.

I do speak to kids a lot. I am very clear with them that not all of them should aspire to be me and not all of them should be aspire to be LeBron.

If a few people decide not to buy my album it's really not going to change my life that much.

If a relationship is going to work, it will require compromise and, even then, it is not always going to end the way you want it to.

I feel like my job is to make impact, spread love, tell great stories, inspire people, that's what I am going to do.

I feel like spirituality definitely comes through in my music, but I don't make any specific efforts to make it that way.

If I collaborate with people, ideas...they take interesting turns and twists, and I'm excited for that and that process and excited to see what we come up with.

If you want the film [La La Land ] to represent all things jazz, it does not. You'll be disappointed by that. But, if you just see it as one guy's point of view, one filmmaker's point of view, and one story among many stories that can be told about jazz, then it's not as much of an issue.

I gravitate toward people that are a little more outrageous than I am. And we complement each other well.

I have a great band, with very talented players, and we give everything we have every night.

I have a structured songwriting process. I start with the music and try to come up with musical ideas, then the melody, then the hook, and the lyrics come last. Some people start with the lyrics first because they know what they want to talk about and they just write a whole bunch of lyrical ideas, but for me the music tells me what to talk about.

I hear melodies and hooks all day. I've always been that way, since I was a kid.

I just want my music to measure up to. Part of it's just thinking about my place in history and how this music is going to be perceived, if it's listened to 30, 40 years from now.

I keep learning, listening, growing and experimenting.

I like songs that have like a little bit of quirkiness to them. What I like to do with songs, is kind of throw a little curveball in the lyrics or in the arrangement, to kind of give it a little twist to it.

I listen to all those kinds of music, from classic soul to hip-hop to Brazilian music to, you know, jazz to indie to alternative... And for me, when I'm making music, it's all in my head, and all those influences in my head. So if something comes to me that's a reference from a different genre then people are used to hearing from me, I'm not afraid to go there with it.

I listen to all those kinds of music, from classic soul to hip-hop to Brazilian music to, you know, jazz to indie to alternative. So whatever. I listen to all if it. Classic rock and classic pop, all of that.

I'm craving more soul, I'm craving more truth, I'm craving more socially - just people that are aware of what's going on in the world.

I'm honestly not a great gift giver. I could give better - my girlfriends have always complained about that.

I'm not going to run for office. I don't think that's the right move for me.

I'm pretty adventurous with food, so I'm not afraid to try anything.

I'm trying to be me and embrace all the parts of me that have grown up, listened to more music and soaked up more influences.

I'm used to getting sexy sometimes in the lyrics.

In my neighborhood in Springfield, Ohio, there were a lot of young kids. We all played tackle football after school, but I knew very early on that I was not an athlete.

In terms of the technology I use the most, it's probably a tie between my Blackberry and my MacBook Pro laptop. That's how I communicate with the rest of the world and how I handle all the business I have to handle.