African Quotes

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

• That's the way I do things when I want to celebrate, I always plant a tree. And so I got an indigenous tree, called Nandi flame, it has this beautiful red flowers. When it is in flower it is like it is in flame.Kenya
• It was easy to persecute me without people feeling ashamed. It was easy to vilify me and project me as a woman who was not following the tradition of a 'good African woman' and as a highly educated elitist who was trying to show innocent African women ways of doing things that were not acceptable to African men.Kenya
• I was a supporter of the desire, in my section of Nigeria, to leave the federation because it was treated very badly with something that was called genocide in those days.Nigeria
• We are very fond of blaming the poor for destroying the environment. But often it is the powerful, including governments, that are responsible.Kenya
• In my country we go to prison first and then become President.South Africa
• We must become bigger than we have been: more courageous, greater in spirit, larger in outlook. We must become members of a new race, overcoming petty prejudice, owing our ultimate allegiance not to nations but to our fellow men within the human community.Ethiopia
• The majority of my sisters and daughters in the Central African Republic don’t know their rights so they can’t defend them. But we who know our rights can help them. We must always help them: the battle is always to promote and protect the rights of women.Central African Republic
• When I first started, it was really an innocent response to the needs of women in rural areas. When we started planting trees to meet their needs, there was nothing beyond that. I did not see all the issues that I have to come to deal with.Kenya
• We used the Western style to express our own themes and stories. But don't forget that our heritage includes The Thousand and One Nights.Egypt
• In fact, I thought that Christianity was a very good and a very valuable thing for us. But after a while, I began to feel that the story that I was told about this religion wasn't perhaps completely whole, that something was left out.Nigeria
• When a handshake goes beyond the elbow, we know it has turned to another thing.Nigeria
• When I took office, Liberia began to recover from years of neglect. Our people have brought clean water into the heart of Monrovia to children who have never known water from a tap. Efforts are underway to expand water projects as much as possible throughout the country.Liberia
• When old people speak it is not because of the sweetness of words in our mouths; it is because we see something which you do not see.Nigeria
• When resources are degraded, we start competing for them, whether it is at the local level in Kenya, where we had tribal clashes over land and water, or at the global level, where we are fighting over water, oil, and minerals. So one way to promote peace is to promote sustainable management and equitable distribution of resources.Kenya
• I don't really know why I care so much. I just have something inside me that tells me that there is a problem, and I have got to do something about it. I think that is what I would call the God in me.Kenya
• For me, one of the major reasons to move beyond just the planting of trees was that I have tendency to look at the causes of a problem. We often preoccupy ourselves with the symptoms, whereas if we went to the root cause of the problems, we would be able to overcome the problems once and for all.Kenya
• Without literature my life would be miserable.Egypt
• Without you, African mother, there would have been no us--African fathers, sons and daughters. Do we need to say any more African mothers, our own true goddesses! Let us praise you to the highest, telling the world about your righteousness. Let us tell the entire universe about your sacredness African woman.
• In Kenya women are the first victims of environmental degradation, because they are the ones who walk for hours looking for water, who fetch firewood, who provide food for their families.Kenya
• Women are responsible for their children, they cannot sit back, waste time and see them starve.Kenya
• When the British came to Igboland, for instance, at the beginning of the 20th century, and defeated the men in pitched battles in different places, and set up their administrations, the men surrendered. And it was the women who led the first revolt.Nigeria
• If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner.South Africa
• If you don't like someone's story, write your own.Nigeria
• The writer interweaves a story with his own doubts, questions, and values. That is art.Egypt