African Quotes

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

• There are times when a leader must move out ahead of the flock, go off in a new direction, confident that he is leading his people the right way.South Africa
• The problem with leaderless uprisings taking over is that you don't always know what you get at the other end. If you are not careful you could replace a bad government with one much worse!.Nigeria
• One individual can begin a movement that turns the tide of history. Martin Luther King in the civil rights movement, Mohandas Ganhi in India, Nelson Mandela in South Africa are examples of people standing up with courage and non-violence to bring about needed changes.United States
• As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn't leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I'd still be in prison.South Africa
• Let freedom reign. The sun never set on so glorious a human achievement.South Africa
• Liberia just needs to go through this one political transition and it can really take off. Everything's in place now. We cannot afford to put the country in the hands of someone that lacks the experience.Liberia
• The biggest lesson from Africa was that life's joys come mostly from relationships and friendships, not from material things. I saw time and again how much fun Africans had with their families and friends and on the sports fields; they laughed all the time.United States
• I tell my students, it's not difficult to identify with somebody like yourself, somebody next door who looks like you. What's more difficult is to identify with someone you don't see, who's very far away, who's a different color, who eats a different kind of food. When you begin to do that then literature is really performing its wonders.Nigeria
• Looking at faces of people, one gets the feeling there's a lot of work to be done.Nigeria
• I reject any path which rejects life, but I can't help loving Sufism because it sounds so beautiful. It gives relief in the midst of battle.Egypt
• I consider Khomeini's position dangerous. He does not have the right to pass judgment-that is not the Islamic way.Egypt
• If the urge to write should ever leave me, I want that day to be my last.Egypt
• It is very much the theme of our President, President Thabo Mbeki, whose passion is for Africa to work together, and for Africans to get up and do things for us. We are trying as women to do things for ourselves.South Africa
• The black man in Africa had mastered the arts and sciences. He knew the course of the stars in the universe before the man up in Europe knew that the earth wasn't flat.United States
• A man who calls his kinsmen to a feast does not do so to save them from starving. They all have food in their own homes. When we gather together in the moonlit village ground it is not because of the moon. Every man can see it in his own compound. We come together because it is good for kinsmen to do so.Nigeria
• I will not leave South Africa, nor will I surrender. Only through hardship, sacrifice and militant action can freedom be won. The struggle is my life. I will continue fighting for freedom until the end of my days.South Africa
• I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities.South Africa
• I dream of the realization of the unity of Africa, whereby its leaders combine in their efforts to solve the problems of this continent. I dream of our vast deserts, of our forests, of all our great wildernesses.South Africa
• Without education, your children can never really meet the challenges they will face. So it's very important to give children education and explain that they should play a role for their country.South Africa
• Our human compassion binds us the one to the other - not in pity or patronizingly, but as human beings who have learnt how to turn our common suffering into hope for the future.South Africa
• There is no passion to be found playing small - in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.South Africa
• I do not deny that I planned sabotage. I did not plan it in a spirit of recklessness nor because I have any love of violence. I planned it as a result of a calm and sober assessment of the political situation that had arisen after many years of tyranny, exploitation and oppression of my people by the whites.South Africa
• There is no easy walk to freedom anywhere, and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountaintop of our desires.South Africa
• Where globalization means, as it so often does, that the rich and powerful now have new means to further enrich and empower themselves at the cost of the poorer and weaker, we have a responsibility to protest in the name of universal freedom.South Africa