African Quotes

I look at an ant and see myself: a native South African, endowed with a strength much greater than my size, so I might cope with the weight of racism that crushes my spirit. (Miriam Makeba)

I do not trust people who don't love themselves and yet tell me, 'I love you.' There is an African saying which is Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.

Maya Angelou

Morals are in all countries the result of legislation and government; they are not African or Asian or European: they are good or bad.

Denis Diderot

It's a pity one can't imagine what one can't compare to anything. Genius is an African who dreams up snow.

Vladimir Nabokov

The first book I wrote was The Bride Price which was a romantic book, but my husband burnt the book when he saw it. I was the typical African woman, I'd done this privately, I wanted him to look at it, approve it and he said he wouldn't read it.

Buchi Emecheta

In one African myth the word for God is even identical with skill and capacity. The Godhead is defined as that thing which appears in man as the mystery of an unusual skill or capacity. It is something divine, a spark of the divinity in him, not his own possession or achievement, but a miracle.

Marie-Louise von Franz

To be a slaveholder meant one had to regard the African American as inferior in every way.

Stephen Ambrose

Deep down, if we really accept that their lives - African lives - are equal to ours, we would all be doing more to put the fire out. Its an uncomfortable truth.

Jeffrey D. Sachs

We don't intend to always keep this necessarily African oriented. Originally I had hoped to have African American Indian of this area, and the Appalachian of this area, but at the same time, just as we have the Haitian room, we will always have room for another exhibit.

Katherine Dunham

Seriously though, my father was the first African American to sign a contract with the Metropolitan Opera so I grew up with classical music and jazz in the home all the time.

Bobby McFerrin

The first job I had with the Smithsonian was as a field researcher among African American communities in Southwest Louisiana and Arkansas for the festival. (Bernice Johnson Reagon)

Nigeria is a West African nation of over 100 million energetic people. It is endowed with lots of natural resources but lacks human resources.

Philip Emeagwali

Those who tell you that the territorial question is an abstraction, that you can never colonize another territory without the African slavetrade, are both deaf and blind to the history of the last sixty years.

Robert Toombs

I have strong views about South African politics and I still don't feel I need to make public statements.

Zola Budd

We pride ourselves as being top, really, on the African ladder... We feel that we have actually been advancing rather than going backwards.

Robert Mugabe

Our economy is a hundred times better, than the average African economy. Outside South Africa, what country is [as good as] Zimbabwe? ... What is lacking now are goods on the shelves-that is all.

Robert Mugabe

Many African leaders refuse to send their troops on peace keeping missions abroad because they probably need their armies to intimidate their own populations.

Kofi Annan

A genocide in Africa has not received the same attention that genocide in Europe or genocide in Turkey or genocide in other part of the world. There is still this kind of basic discrimination against the African people and the African problems.

Boutros Boutros-Ghali

The tragedy of civil wars in countries like Angola and Mozambique is that they left many civilians maimed. Poverty is the reason HIV/AIDS spread so rapidly in the African townships and slums. Poverty is the real killer.

Miriam Makeba

In New York I heard A Piece of Ground, written by a white South African, Jeremy Taylor. I modified it a little and sang it myself. That song is very special to me because it deals with the land question in southern Africa. We were dispossessed of our land.

Miriam Makeba

I didn't have much, but I was always happy to share what I did have. It seemed like every African that came to New York City would show up at my apartment door at dinnertime, and I couldn't turn them away. I wasn't much older than any of them, but they started calling me ‘Mama Africa' and the name stuck. (Miriam Makeba)

Among our neighbors of Central and Southern America, we see the Caucasian mingled with the Indian and the African. They have the forms of free government, because they have copied them. To its benefits they have not attained, because that standard of civilization is above their race. Revolution succeeds Revolution, and the country mourns that some petty chief may triumph, and through a sixty days' government ape the rulers of the earth.

Jefferson Davis

I have spoken all over the world and I have great respect for Muslims, I have great respect for the African people, I have respect for the other races. Even back home in Lousiana, I'm called a racist, but I have respect for the Black people of my country and I want them to have their own life, too, and I want them to be able to pursue their own destiny and not be controlled, and not be damaged.

David Duke

China has established friendship with many African countries, and is opening itself up to Africa and providing assistance. It is cooperating with African countries on an equal basis and has no desire to colonize Africa.

Wen Jiabao

The realization of New Africa can only be possible by the African cultivating spiritual balance, which leads to the practicalization of social regeneration, to realizing economic determination, becoming mentally emancipated, and ushering in a political resurgence.

Nnamdi Azikiwe

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