African Quotes

Quotes from African writers, leaders and thinkers — cited to a published source wherever one is known. 269 in the archive.

• The Arab world also won the Nobel with me. I believe that international doors have opened, and that from now on, literate people will consider Arab literature also. We deserve that recognition.Egypt
• And I believe that the best learning process of any kind of craft is just to look at the work of others.Nigeria
• The future belongs to us, because we have taken charge of it. We have the commitment, we have the resourcefulness, and we have the strength of our people to share the dream across Africa of clean water for all.Liberia
• The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism.Nigeria
• The whole idea of a stereotype is to simplify. Instead of going through the problem of all this great diversity - that it's this or maybe that - you have just one large statement; it is this.Nigeria
• It's the little things citizens do. That's what will make the difference. My little thing is planting trees.Kenya
• Some people ask: “Why the word feminist? Why not just say you are a believer in human rights, or something like that?” Because that would be dishonest. Feminism is, of course, part of human rights in general—but to choose to use the vague expression human rights is to deny the specific and particular problem of gender. It would be a way of pretending that it was not women who have, for centuries, been excluded. It would be a way of denying that the problem of gender targets women.Nigeria
• I'm a practised writer now. But when I began, I had no idea what this was going to be. I just knew that there was something inside me that wanted me to tell who I was, and that would have come out even if I didn't want it.Nigeria
• But theater, because of its nature, both text, images, multimedia effects, has a wider base of communication with an audience. That's why I call it the most social of the various art forms.Nigeria
• There is no medicine like water.Cameroon
• They have not always elected the best leaders, particularly after a long period in which they have not used this facility of free election. You tend to lose the habit.Nigeria
• This world was not created piecemeal. Africa was born no later and no earlier than any other geographical area on this globe. Africans, no more and no less than other men, possess all human attributes, talents and deficiencies, virtues and faults.Ethiopia
• I was called a terrorist yesterday, but when I came out of jail, many people embraced me, including my enemies, and that is what I normally tell other people who say those who are struggling for liberation in their country are terrorists.South Africa
• In today's world, paradoxically, it is the boldest action that is often the safest. Remaining where you are in a world that is changing so rapidly is in fact the most dangerous of all places to be in.Nigeria
• It's estimated that across Africa 100 elephants are killed for their tusks every day. It takes nothing more than simple math to get to what that adds up to in a year, and it's a distressing figure.United States
• When a tradition gathers enough strength to go on for centuries, you don't just turn it off one day.Nigeria
• Traveling - it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.Morocco
• One of the truest tests of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised.Nigeria
• Everybody now admits that apartheid was wrong, and all I did was tell the people who wanted to know where I come from how we lived in South Africa. I just told the world the truth. And if my truth then becomes political, I can't do anything about that.South Africa
• Well, the first thing is that truth and power for me form an antithesis, an antagonism, which will hardly ever be resolved. I can define in fact, can simplify the history of human society, the evolution of human society, as a contest between power and freedom.Nigeria
• Under a dictatorship, a nation ceases to exist. All that remains is a fiefdom, a planet of slaves regimented by aliens from outer space.Nigeria
• It is unfortunate that so much of the history of Africa has been written by conquerors, foreigners, missionaries and adventurers. The Egyptians left the best record of their history written by local writers.United States
• Until you dig a hole, you plant a tree, you water it and make it survive, you haven't done a thing. You are just talking.Kenya
• We must use time wisely and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right.South Africa