c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
The shots had dispersed the birds; there remained only two marabous, standing between ten and twenty paces away and plunged in reverie. They were like two old men with bald heads pressed between the shoulders.
— Henryk Sienkiewicz, In Desert and Wilderness
Everything, all those great things, had happened so far away--or so it seemed to [Mma Ramotswe] at the time. The world was made to sound as if it belonged to other people--to those who lived in distant countries that were so different from Botswana; that was before people had learned to assert that the world was theirs too, that what happened in Botswana was every bit as important, and valuable, as what happened anywhere else.
— Alexander McCall Smith, The Double Comfort Safari Club
The year the Europeans seized Jomo Kenyatta (1952), Chepusepa and I were sharing our homestead with Arimo, a Teso, who was a headman of the local road crew. One day, Arimo's son found an ostrich's nest between Amudat and Katabok, while he was watching cattle. There were six eggs, and both of our cowherds took one. The brought the two eggs to our home and put them in the ashes near the fire. After two weeks, they hatched.I remember the baby ostriches walking about, eating millet and stones. Arimo took care of them, and they grew quite large. One night a leopard got the female, but the male continued to thrive, and Arimo harvested its feathers twice. Then, one day, when it was fully grown, our ostrich wandered into the town of Amudat. A European saw it and asked the people, "Where did this come from?""Oh, it is the 'ox' of a man named Arimo, they told him.The European immediately summoned Arimo to Amudat. "Do you have license to keep an ostrich?" he demanded."Of course not!" Arimo replied. "This ostrich doesn't belong to anyone else--it's mine. So why do I need a license?"But the European decreed,"From this day on, you must not keep this ostrich without a license. If you do, you will go to jail for stealing from the government!"That was only the beginning. The Europeans have been seizing our pet ostriches ever since. When other people heard about Arimo's trouble, they killed their ostriches so they could at least have the feathers. Another man was so angry, he killed his female ostrich and destroyed all her eggs.
— Pat Robbins
It was ... disconcerting to examine your charts before a proposed flight only to find that in many cases the bulk of the terrain over which you had to fly was bluntly marked: 'UNSURV
— Beryl Markham, West with the Night
The resources of Africa are greater than the amount of aid it can ever get. Hence, Africa needs to manage its resources prudently and efficiently to minimise its dependence on aid.
— Benjamin Kofi Quansah
Moer and more he is convinced that English is an unfit medium for the truth in South Africa.
— J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace
If we act in clean way, we shall clear the city of any dirt.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
The more Africa depends on aid the less opportunities it creates for its people
— Benjamin Kofi Quansah
In six harrowing weeks of travel I felt I had touched the heart of Africa and found it broken.
— Tim Butcher, Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart
The future of wildlife and the habitat that they depend on is being destroyed. It is time to make nature and all the beauty living within it our priority.
— Paul Oxton
No one in the world needs a Rhino horn but a Rhino.
— Paul Oxton
Everything has changed, and nothing has altered. Oh, what a fate.
— A.H. Septimius
Wherever there are wild animals in the world, there is always an opportunity for caring, compassion and kindness.
— Paul Oxton
This is Africa, my friends … These folks do things differently.” Sven Taxel, who regards himself as an expert on South Africa because he has read Wilbur Smith, Rian Malan and André Brink, tries to calm his fellow congregation members.
— Harry Kalmer, 'n Duisend stories oor Johannesburg: 'n stadsroman
I found myself back in the sepulchral city resenting the sight of people hurrying through the streets to filch a little money from each other, to devour their infamous cookery, to gulp their unwholesome beer, to dream their insignificant and silly dreams. They trespassed upon my thoughts. They were intruders whose knowledge of life was to me an irritating pretense, because I felt so sure they could not possibly know the things I knew.
— Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
He [Stanley] had stated that he longed to do something wonderful for the African tribes along the Congo, and instead, as would become all too apparent, had set them up for a terrible fate. In 1877 he came down the great river as the first European ever to do so, declaring his hope that the Congo should become like `a torch to those who sought to do good'." Instead, it became the torch that attracted the archexploiter King Leopold II of Belgium.
— Tim Jeal, Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer
Long before Christopher Columbus, the celebrated Chinese navigator Zheng He travelled through the south and westward maritime routes in the Indian Ocean and established relations with more than thirty countries in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.
— Patrick Mendis, Peaceful War: How the Chinese Dream and the American Destiny Create a New Pacific World Order
Freed slaves returned to Africa settled in a section of what was known as the “Pepper Coast” and on July 26, 1847, issued a Declaration of Independence and established a constitution based on the political principles denoted in the United States Constitution. In doing so they established the independent Republic of Liberia. Law and Order was something the ruling class of Liberians prided themselves on. The Americo Liberians, as they called themselves, were uber-Conservatives and had a glorified picture of what the American government was like. As Conservatives they saw themselves living a privileged lifestyle, sustained by their faith in God and the blessings that had been bestowed upon them by this deity. Amongst themselves there was much talk about the subjects of freedom, liberty, democracy and independence. They felt that these idealisms were deserved because of their exceptionalism. Taking a page from the concept of American exceptionalism, they fantasied of their very own Liberian exceptionalism, completely forgetting the indigenous natives living among them. Whereas the Americo Liberians lived an affluent lifestyle reflecting the antebellum era in the Southern tier of the United States, the local blacks, for the greatest part lived in squalor. In 1980, a violent military coup shattered the way of life in Liberia. Led by army Master Sergeant Samuel Doe, the country’s ruling group of Americo-Liberians were brutally overthrown and frequently executed. Doe's term as President of Liberia led to a period of civil wars, resulting in the devastation of Liberia’s economy. Liberia became one of the most impoverished nations in the world, in which most of the population still lives below the international poverty line.
— Captain Hank Bracker, "Seawater One...."
Yes, many years of oppression may have complicated things and it seems impossible for blacks to create their own means of production. But, I truly believe that we must start somewhere. We must reimagine a world where we are proudly black and support all things black in order to reinvent the economic wheel. We talk. We produce theories. We prove ourselves and and and... But we must also put our money where our mouths and theories are. This is why we fight each and every single day.
— Malebo Sephodi
You can no longer see or identify yourself solely as a member of a tribe, but as a citizen of a nation of one people working toward a common purpose.
— Idowu Koyenikan, Wealth for All Africans: How Every African Can Live the Life of Their Dreams
The Whiteman told of another country beyond the sea where a powerful woman sat on a throne while men and women danced under the shadow of her authority and benevolence. She was ready to spread the shadow to cover the Agikuyu. They laughed at this eccentric man whose skin had been so scalded that the black outside had peeled off. The hot water must have gone into his head.Nevertheless, his words about a woman on the throne echoed something in the heart, deep down in their history. It was many, many years ago. Then women ruled the land of the Agikuyu. Men had no property, they were only there to serve the whims and needs of the women. Those were hard years. So they waited for women to go to war, they plotted a revolt, taking an oath of secrecy to keep them bound each to each in the common pursuit of freedom. They would sleep with all the women at once, for didn't they know the heroines would return hungry for love and relaxation? Fate did the rest; women were pregnant; the takeover met with little resistance.
— Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, A Grain of Wheat
Africa has within it everything it needs to reach the peace. But Africa does not do Africa, Africa does foreigners
— Seun Ajibade
Ghana, a land full of Gold! Africa, a land full of resources!
— Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
Y'know, there's a very interesting state of Anarchy up there. Everything's cracking up. That lot of tycoons; they don't believe in anything. They remind me of the white people in Central Africa. They used to say, 'Well, of course the blacks will drive us into the sea in fifty years time'. They used to say it cheerfully. In other words, 'We know that what we're doing is wrong.
— Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook
They sang that song which distills all the suffering and the hope of Africa; that song which had inspired and comforted so many, “Nkosi Sikeleli Afrika,” God Bless Africa, give her life, watch over her children.
— Alexander McCall Smith, The Full Cupboard of Life
We teach people in order to open up their minds and release their captive powers. But we cannot predict the result. Freedom - we free their minds from superstition. We give the people the keys of the future to act therein as they wish.
— Tayeb Salih, Season of Migration to the North
She believed in getting as much use as possible from everything, and thought that as long as machinery, or anything else, could be cajoled into operation, it should be kept; to do otherwise, she thought, was wasteful.
— Alexander McCall Smith, The Kalahari Typing School for Men
It was hard to disappear completely in Botswana, where there were fewer than two million people and where people had a healthy curiosity as to who was who and where people had come from. It was very difficult to be anonymous, even in Gaborone, as there would always be neighbours who would want to know exactly what one was doing and who one’s people had been.
— Alexander McCall Smith, The Kalahari Typing School for Men
Freedom is not a privilege for some but a right for ALL
— Lazarus Takawira, Imagine Africa: Home Hope Harmony
Most people write me off when they see me.They do not know my story.They say I am just an African.They judge me before they get to know me.What they do not know isThe pride I have in the blood that runs through my veins;The pride I have in my rich culture and the history of my people;The pride I have in my strong family ties and the deep connection to my community;The pride I have in the African music, African art, and African dance;The pride I have in my name and the meaning behind it.Just as my name has meaning, I too will live my life with meaning.So you think I am nothing?Don’t worry about what I am now,For what I will be, I am gradually becoming.I will raise my head high wherever I goBecause of my African pride,And nobody will take that away from me.
— Idowu Koyenikan, Wealth for All Africans: How Every African Can Live the Life of Their Dreams
After a little while you became aware of how still it was out here. Now, looking back on my life in Africa, I feel like it might altogether be described as the existence of a person who had come from a rushed and noisy world, into a still country.
— Isak Dinesen
But this is africa, so hardly anything is normal.
— Alexandra Fuller, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight
The only thing that makes me sad is that I shall be leaving Africa when I die. I love Africa, which is my mother and my father. When I am dead, I shall miss the smell of Africa
— Alexander McCall Smith, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
Almost astride the Equator, night fell like a portcullis. The sun dropped below the horizon and suddenly all was dark.
— Tim Butcher, Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart
Love in the DaytimeMy loverShines like the sun.I may be burnedBlack as a frying pan,Sweating bucketsAnd keeling overWith vertigo,But why worry?My loverShines like the sun.She pours over my bodyAnd breathes into my soul.It feels so goodWhen she lightsMy love on fireLike dry wood.Translated from Tigrinya by Charles Cantalupo with Ghirmai Negash
— Reesom Haile
Making wine and drinking wine is not new to African Americans and others in the Diaspora. South Africa has a three-century history in growing, harvesting and distilling grapes as wine. The entire continent of Africa has a history in wine-making. In this country, slaves cultivated the vineyards owned by Thomas Jefferson and other vintners.
— Andre Hueston Mack
Africa had a way of coming back and simply covering everything up again.
— Alexander McCall Smith, Tears of the Giraffe
I love Africa....... Each day each breath, she consumes me. I have never changed so much In such a short time Each day I feel more part of her. Her colour, smell, her smiles , the ever changing landscapes. Vast deserts rolling hills plaines & Mountains. Her beauty and her majesty. Like sweet wine flowing through my veins, my heart sings as I wave to all those faces going by. Back home to my Grandmothers Birth place. They said “welcome home”, those village boys. How did they know? You all said I would cry, I thought no, but yes I often do. Not for their pain but for their happiness . I cry now, together hearts will sing ,” I love Africa”. See her now as I write.. Kilimanjaro , it doesn’t get much better .Tears on a hard mans face. There is no time but now , no words just peace. Thousands of smiling faces, the mass of souls are singing out . Yes I see and feel it now.... In those trees I sense the Spirits of our saving , could it be our looking for? Sailing ships a familiar shore, now I’m crying happy and singing . Thoughts intense of please no more. I love Africa. An epiphany I can’t explain .Not like the ancient rituals , sound of rain, and men together by campfires. Beginning to end but there really is no such thing as time, just imaginings. We still love sitting by the camp fire and we love listening to the rain? I love Africa the Eden and our Birthplace , Man. How can I explain to you my friend what I have seen and felt unless you too have seen it all ... Africa. Michael Burke.
— Michael Burke
Africa was full of people in need of help and there had to be a limit. You simply could not help everybody; but you could at least help those who came into your life. That principle allowed you to deal with the suffering you saw. That was your suffering. Other people would have to deal with the suffering that they, in their turn, came across.
— Alexander McCall Smith, Morality for Beautiful Girls
This friendship among women is something Samuel often talks about. Because the women share a husband but the husband does not share their friendships, it makes Samuel uneasy. It is confusing, I suppose. And it is Samuel's duty as a Christian minister to preach the bible's directive of one husband and one wife. Samuel is confused because ti him, since the women are friends and will do anything for one another - not always, but more often than anyone from America would expect - and since they giggle and gossip and nurse each other's children, then they must be happy with things as they are. (Walker 2000: 141)
— Alice Walker, The Color Purple
...it was just a version of Rimbaud in Harar: the exile, a selfish beast with modest fantasies of power, secretly enjoying a life of beer drinking and scribbling and occasional mythomania in a nice climate where there were no interruptions, such as unwelcome letters or faxes or cell phones. It was an eccentric ideal, life lived off the map.¨
— Paul Theroux, Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town
There, in the Levantine crossroads between Europe, Africa, and Asia, the sovereign nation of Israel would exemplify what right looks like.
— James Mikołajczyk, Jesus the Jew, Christ the King: Exploring the Hypostatic Union Between the Jesus of History and the Christ of Faith
At one level the story of the second fall of Zimbabwe can be read as tragic yet a courageous one: a simple but soaring binary about unfounded courage in the face of immeasurable oppression. But at another level, it is a window into a much more complex, perhaps even darker and sadder, narrative about contemporary slaveship and the terrible collision of aspiration and frustration and the need to survive that has been unleashed upon the people of Zimbabwe. Exploitation and oppression are not matters of race.
— Thabo Katlholo, The Mud Hut I Grew Upon
As an ancient cradle of Iron Age civilization, Zimbabwe has a great emotional importance to the economy of Southern Africa and that's especially true for Botswana since both countries are landlocked. Harare was the site of some historic scenes and the best trade regimes, and it is where generations of Southern African children have gone for their education. Bulawayo was a trade giant amongst the people of the north – the Bakalanga, the Venda and the Shona. Now brick-by-brick the empire was facing a second fall after the last fall of the Great Zimbabwe.
— Thabo Katlholo, The Mud Hut I Grew Upon
To understand what happened in Zimbabwe its worth trying to see things through the Zimbabwean people prism for a moment. Immune from the propaganda and the western media mind- bend. The real issues started a long, long time ago before the current regimes. Those who came bearing greed and seeking to rip off the cradle of Sub-Saharan Africa orchestrated the demise the people of Zimbabwe found themselves reeling in
— Thabo Katlholo, The Mud Hut I Grew Upon
It’s not that easy living with malaria. The reality of the high annual death toll should make that very obvious.
— T.K. Naliaka
African despots are all the same, they think they can wake up one morning and create themselves a Kingdom and rule over it and pass it over to their children and grandchildren. They don't get one thing you can't be a descendant of a title less class, with no trace of royal DNA and just subject yourself to people.
— Allan Amanyire
Dirty politicians, corrupt leaders and thieves are sent to the Ugandan parliament and state house by lazy Ugandans who don’t go to vote.
— Allan Amanyire
People who don't exercise their freedom of voting (choosing their leaders) are irresponsible. Such people have no right to complain or want more than what they are receiving from the government. Intentional failure to vote is cowardly, irresponsible and a sign of ignorance.
— Allan Amanyire
..for Africa was in a way none of them could explain linked up with heaven and they thought of the two places with the same reverence and ultimate longing.
— Elizabeth Yates, Amos Fortune, Free Man
Not much was said of Gaberone except its riches and its danger. The prisons were said to be in-escapable, the shanty towns cheap, the police didn’t bother the illegal immigrants unless they were caught committing crimes. A dangerous paradise.
— Thabo Katlholo
A Motswana in Zambia or Zimbabwe was referred to as gwerekwere and so was a Zimbabwean or Zambian in Botswana. Post-colonialism tragedy.
— Thabo Katlholo, The Mud Hut I Grew Upon
As it was, being a Zimbabwean immigrant was the worst thing a person could be in Southern Africa. They were the new Hebrews – homeless.
— Thabo Katlholo, The Mud Hut I Grew Upon
We are the third world not because the sun rises on the West and sets in the East but because we have engaged the reverse gear and we are moving with jet like speed in the wrong direction -we must change this by rolling up our sleeves and working for the growth of our country.
— Patrick L.O. Lumumba
This land has brought forth numerous children, favouring both the bad and the good ones. It is not the land that is responsible for the people’s hardships, it is the people themselves. Pg.8
— Obehi Peter Ewanfoh, AMENDE: The Stream Water
Sometimes when you're hurting, it helps to throw yourself at something that will take your weight.
— Paula McLain, Circling the Sun
We can only go to the limits of ourselves. Anything more and we give too much away. Then we're not good for anyone.
— Paula McLain, Circling the Sun
AFC Leopards were as thrilling a side as ever took the pitch and they dominated East African football in the eighties. That Kenyan players were an excitable bunch was attested to in one memorable Leopards match, with the opposing goalkeeper being handcuffed and dragged away to jail by police.
— David Bennun, Tick Bite Fever
If people's night fears of sorcery - which negatively influences their decision to use mosquito nets - fail to impress the outsider, the brute everyday reality remains; in a number of rural African villages it is still much too common for very real hyenas to snatch people, especially children, out of their own homes as they lie sleeping at night, because of the lack of a good front door.
— T.K. Naliaka
When an entire segment of the world is burned and reduced to a lawless battleground for thugs and mercenaries, a land where government does not exist, where the slate of history is being wiped out and hope has drowned in gallons of innocent blood, the only respite comes in the form of the open seas and what lies beyond the horizon. So ships are boarded and pain is tolerated just a little while longer.
— Aysha Taryam
Will Brazilian antigambiae measures succeed in Africa? As time goes by it will almost certainly be found that an increasing number of areas can be cleaned of gambiae and be freed of gambiae-transmitted malaria. In Africa, where the species is already widely disseminated, it would seem logical to attempt eradication by beginning in the center of the area to be cleaned and working always outward. It has been demonstrated in Brazil that species eradication of Aedes aegypti and Anopheles gambiae is feasible.
— Fred Lowe Soper, Anopheles Gambiae in Brazil, 1930 to 1940
Deep in the heart of the hot, wet African rainforest, there lives a tribe of peacemakers who share a multiplicity of pleasures and make a very special kind of love. South of the sprawling Congo River, in the midst of war-ravaged territory, some 2,000 miles from the arid Ethiopian desert where the oldest human fossils have been found, lies this lush and steamy jungle paradise, the only natural habitat of the bonobo.
— Susan Block, The Bonobo Way
The trouble was, Elizabeth thought, they did not tell the children of colonial families not to love these foreign lands, not to fall in love with their birthplaces. While parents dreamt of retiring in peace to another place called ‘home’, their children soaked up knowledge of the only world they knew: its different peoples, its spicy food, its birdsong, the way warm rain fell like a curtain through the palm trees. Their souls would be forever torn.
— Anne M. Chappel, Zanzibar Uhuru: revolution, two women and the challenge of survival
Denys had a way of seeing everything as if he knew it would never be there exactly the same again. He understood how nothing ever holds still for us, or should. The trick is learning to take things as they come and fully, too, with no resistence or fear, not trying to grip them too tightly or make them bend.
— Paula McLain, Circling the Sun
My cardinal belief is that it is the natives of the land that till the land best, with passion and meaning. The advanced nations of this world built their countries by the sweat of their indigenes.
— Nana Awere Damoah, I Speak of Ghana
It is only by our hands that we can build this continent to the standard that we envy and admire in the advanced countries.
— Nana Awere Damoah, I Speak of Ghana
Oral tradition is practised in most African cultures: ideals, family histories and legacies are handed down from one generation to the other physically or verbally. However, this system is flawed in the sense that a lot of African innovation, experience and culture have been lost, undocumented.
— Nana Awere Damoah, Through the Gates of Thought
Come to Africa and help! Wherever you may be in the world, there is something you can give back to the continent that gave you a name and an identity, at least.
— Nana Awere Damoah, I Speak of Ghana
This stupidity of sounding a siren and speeding through traffic with a coffin must be an African speciality.
— Nana Awere Damoah
I learnt years ago not to use logic to understand African politics.
— Nana Awere Damoah
Nkrumah declared that we faced neither East nor West but we faced forward. But, see, we can face forward and just look at the horizon. Sometimes, as I think of Ghana, I am tempted to believe that we kept looking East and West and never made up our minds, so we just stood still.
— Nana Awere Damoah
Shovels aren't very glamorous, but they've been liberating entire communities from malaria for the past 5,000 years.
— T.K. Naliaka
It is a shame that the very people who used education to clamber out of the disadvantages they had grown up in, have drawn up the ladder after them.
— Nana Ama Amamoo
Rome was not built in a day, but it was built everyday.
— Nana Awere Damoah
You have to understand – there is a romance to Africa. You can see a sunset and believe you have witnessed the hand of God. You watch the slow lope of a lioness and forget to breathe. You marvel at the tripod of a giraffe bent to water. In Africa, there are iridescent blues on the wings of birds that you do not see anywhere else in nature. In Africa, in the midday heat, you can see blisters in the atmosphere. When you are in Africa, you feel primordial, rocked in the cradle of the world.
— Jodi Picoult, Leaving Time
Our cultural roots are the most ancient in the world. The spiritual concepts of our Ancestors gave birth to religious thought African people believe in the oneness of the African family through sacred time, which unites the past, the present and the future. Our Ancestors live with us.
— Marimba Ani
As we stand on the precipice of a life of ministry, we will have to answer the question that Jesus poses to each one of us: Are you willing to count the cost?
— Erica Mbasan, For the Joy Set Before Us: Insights into the Missionary Journey
By the Middle Ages… the introduction of the Trivium was well-known: SÂDI, an educated black from Tombouctou, author of the well-known work entitled, ‘Tarikh es-Soudan’ cites amongst the subjects that he mastered, logic, dialection, grammar, rhetoric, not to mention law and other disciplines...the long lists of subjects studied and the lettered African intellectuals who taught them at the University of Tombouctou…
— Cheikh Anta Diop, Civilisation Ou Barbarie
There is a distressing but not uncommon condition of presidents and other world leaders known as Worrying about Africa. It is usually picked up overseas as at summit meeting on world poverty or disease, and symptoms include painful twinges of guilt over the discrepancy between First and Third World wealth, uncomfortable feelings somewhere below the stomach that perhaps unfettered capitalism is not the benevolent force for good we are constantly assured it is, and frequent attacks of calling for Something to Be Done. The best remedy is invariably a stiff dose of domestic crisis.
— Nicholas Drayson
The African continent has always been more queer than generally acknowledged.
— Chantal Zabus
I want to defend Ben Bella just as I am going to defend Boumedienne. Ben Bella was not the 'demon' that the nervous, demagogic communique of 19 June accused him of being, no more than Boumedienne is the 'reactionary' that L'Unita wrote about. Both are victims of the same drama that every Third World politician lives through if he is honest, if he is a patriot. This was the drama of Lumumba and Nehru; it is the drama of Nyerere and Sekou Toure. The essence of the drama lies in the terrible material resistance that each one encounters on taking his first, second, and third steps up the summit of power. Each one wants to do something good and begins to do it and then sees, after a month, after a year, after three years, that it just isn't happening, that it is slipping away, that it is bogged down in the sand. Everything is in the way: the centuries of backwardness, the primitive economy, the illiteracy, the religious fanaticism, the tribal blindness, the chronic hunger, the colonial past with its practice of debasing and dulling the conquered, the blackmail by the imperialists, the greed of the corrupt, the unemployment, the red ink. progress comes with great difficulty along such a road. The politician begins to push too hard. He looks for a way out through dictatorship. The dictatorship then fathers an opposition. The opposition organises a coup.And the cycle begins anew.
— Ryszard Kapuściński
I do not like to think too much on this Africa. It is too large and too empty,” he said. “People like De Buys, they astonish me with their courage – or perhaps it is a lack in them; they cannot imagine. I think that is one way to be not afraid: in a covered wagon looking at the piece of the horizon your mind can hold, and do not suffer thoughts about endless lands and unknowable things.
— Claire Robertson, The Spiral House
Pescatore marveled at the seascape. It gave him vertigo. The wind deployed cloud formations. The sun seared the Moroccan coastline. He had read a line once about "the lion-colored hills of Africa." Were they lion-colored? What color was a lion exactly?
— Sebastian Rotella
Well, you know, that was the worst of it - this suspicion of not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity - like yours - the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar.
— Joseph Conrad
the deficiency of the negro race is not as a result of the deluge number of bad leaders;rather, its is an outcome of the shortage of young negro intellect ready to lead a revolutionary africa.
— victor adeagbo
To understand a woman, a man had to peel away layer after layer of words, much as one must peel away an onion to get at the desired part.
— Tamar Myers
If literacy was natural, the word ‘illiteracy’ would not exist.
— T.K. Naliaka, A Difficult Damsel to Rescue
Even a little practical working familiarity with cattle goes a long way in Africa, but how many international relations studies include this?
— T.K. Naliaka
The unschooled European mind, inclined to rational reduction, to pigeonholing and simplification, readily pushes everything African into a single bag and is content with facile stereotypes.
— Ryszard Kapuściński, The Shadow of the Sun
It's a lot like the Wild West out here... just with tea shops instead of saloons. Wild West Sahara, that is.
— T.K. Naliaka, A Difficult Damsel to Rescue
We are relatives at the village and yet we become strangers in the city
— Thabo Katlholo, The Mud Hut I Grew Upon
He was enraged and bitter and hoped for a personal meeting with Sarkozy where he would recount to him France's colonial history in Africa and make him see reasons why her policy of assimilation was a voyage to the destruction of Africa, its people, land, culture and sense of belonging.
— S.A.  David, Twas Within A Minute
We must act now to prevent further spread of EBOLA VIRUS. If we do not act collectively, EBOLA VIRUS will wipe all whole populations and generations into their grave. The call to action is now.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
Though they were not familiar with the expression,to paraphrase the saying, when any country in the Sahel sneezes, the rest of the region catches pneumonia, the men there would have clicked their tongues and ruefully nodded their heads that 'woolayi' this was the truth.
— T.K. Naliaka, Between Dunes and Hard Places
I am the Mud Hut I Grew Upon
— Thabo Katlholo, The Mud Hut I Grew Upon
Africa is a huge continent; it would take several lifetimes of thousands of researchers testing in hundreds of languages to collect a valid sample of anything, especially IQ. Most Africans do their schooling in a second language, not their mother tongue. How many people would accept to be tested for their IQ level not in their primary language?
— T.K. Naliaka
Huh. What a dope! Wait till Mom hears about this. He's so in trouble now. You know how crazy she gets about malaria.
— T.K. Naliaka, A Difficult Damsel to Rescue
The sea has testified that Africa and Europe have kissed
— Válgame, Poemas y canciones para el mal de amores Volumen1
To witness the awe of human beings delighting in their own hands forming the written word was humbling and he understood it profoundly at that moment watching those two, with the ancient land around them, in their traditional robes and the resting camels by their campfire, intently regarding writing with such immense respect … that illiteracy meant subsistence, while literacy meant human advancement, the base on which higher achievements and accomplishments of great civilizations could be built.
— T.K. Naliaka
To Nine’s way of thinking, the problems surrounding the exploitation of coltan in the DRC epitomized the problems the entire African continent faced in capitalizing on the huge untapped wealth that lay beneath its surface. Corruption, political unrest and outside interference from non-African countries ensured the continent that should be the world’s wealthiest remained the poorest.
— Lance Morcan, The Orphan Uprising
-Back there our sun doesn't speak.-Where's "there," Miss Marta?-Back there, in Europe. Here, it's different. Here, the sun moans, whispers, shouts.-Surely-I commented delicately-the sun is always the same.- You're wrong. There, the sun is a stone. Here it's a fruit.
— Mia Couto, The Tuner of Silences
According to Okonkwo, the British via its indirect rule system ensured that Africans saw their native leaders as the demons who betrayed their people. He called it a demonocracy
— S.A.  David, Twas Within A Minute
The truth for a man, it's what makes him a man.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
If one could speak two languages well and was raised on tea and baguettes for breakfast,in places where the most mundane daily business on the street is conducted in four languages, where horse carts park at cyber cafes, where would one go? Where could one go? Why,with a smile and a handshake, very far, indeed!
— T.K. Naliaka
Why should we plant, when there are so many mongongo nuts in the world?
— Anonymous Bushman
We all come from somewhere. Born, aborted, extradited, fugitive or even enslaved. But much of what we are, belongs to Mother Africa. We need to respect and have esteem, knowledge and curiosity. Then, open your eyes to understand a little more. Do not accept this cultural void created by that ethnocentric feeling!
— J.B.Alves
...colonialism in Africa was inevitable since the fittest and most creative person was the one that would be destined to lead.
— S.A.  David
According to Okonkwo, the British via its indirect rule system ensured that Africans saw their native leaders as the demons who betrayed their people. He called it a demonocracy and that was the first time I had seen him become so passionate about issues that affect Africa as a people and continent.
— S.A.  David
Hide nothing from the masses of our people. Tell no lies. Expose lies whenever they are told. Mask no difficulties, mistakes, failures. Claim no easy victories...
— Amilcar Cabral, Revolution in Guinea: Selected Texts
You could have just said Ngozi is your tribal name and Ifemelu is your jungle name and throw in one more as your spiritual name. They’ll believe all kinds of shit about Africa.
— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah
If I had not grown up in Nigeria- and if all I knew of Africa were of popular images- I too would think that africa was a place of beautiful landscapes, beautiful animals and incomprehensible people fighting sensless wars, dying of poverty and aids- unable to speak for themselves and waiting to be saved by a kind white foreigner.
— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
If you are stealing something it’s better if it’s small and hideable or something you can eat quickly and be done with, like guavas. This way, people can’t see you with the thing to be reminded that you are a shameless thief and that you stole it from them, so I don’t know what the white people were trying to do in the first place, stealing not just a tiny piece but a whole country. Who can ever forget you stole something like that?
— NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names
Oh God, not another fucking beautiful day.
— James Fox, White Mischief
...she was sensitive enough and intelligent enough to understand, and her literary education could not but have sharpened her perception of the evidence before her eyes: that in the absurd raffle-draw that apportioned the destinies of post-colonial African societies two people starting off even as identical twins in the morning might quiet easily find themselves in the evening one as President shitting on the heads of the people and the other a nightman carrying the people's shit in buckets on his head.
— Chinua Achebe, Anthills of the Savannah
The country is like a great sponge—it finally absorbs you. Eventually you will get malaria or you will get dysentery and whatever you do, if you don't keep doing it, the jungle will grow over you. Black or white, you've got to fight it every minute of the day.
— Katharine Hepburn, The Making of The African Queen, or: How I went to Africa with Bogart, Bacall and Huston and almost lost my mind
I love you so much, Sahra. You will do wonderful things. Have courage and believe in yourself.
— Abeba Habtu, Become Courageous Abeba: A Story of Love, Loss, War and Hope
If the world allows the people of Darfur to be removed forever from their land and their way of life, then genocide will happen elsewhere because it will be seen as something that works. It must not be allowed to work. The people of Darfur need to go home now. I write this for them, and for that day, ... and for those still living who might yet have beautiful lives on the earth.
— Daoud Hari, The Translator: A Tribesman's Memoir of Darfur
I knew right then and there that I would become as courageous as I needed in order to keep him safe. I thought of the soldiers and bullets that I hid from in Asmara. I would stand and fight them to keep Fili safe.
— Abeba Habtu, Become Courageous Abeba: A Story of Love, Loss, War and Hope
Why did you bother coming here at all?""For my work. That's my profession. Writing about important things that are happening in the world.""I'm curious to know what exactly you wrote about Gulu. What important thing has been happening here in our town?""Do you think what I do is of no significance?"She gestured impatiently. "Others have come here too, asked the children questions and then gone away, and at least it was all cut-and-dried. But you came back. I thought it was going to be different. What did you come back for? ... You barged into our lives, and now you've got cold feet. What are you afraid of? You got too close to us, right?
— Jagielski Wojciech
What is a Man / Woman who does not try and make the World Better?
— 'Kingdom of Heaven ' the movie
The matted straw cover of the latrine was yanked away. The sun blinded me as I looked up at the dark outline of two young soldiers in tattered camouflage, their uniforms made for men bigger than they were. They each held an automatic weapon, an AK-47, and were leering down at me. I could see the two gold teeth of one of them as he grinned.Gold-tooth reached down and grabbed my hair, yanking me up by it until he could get the other hand under my arm and pull me the rest of the way. I screamed in terror. He pulled me away from the pit as he and the others held their noses and laughed hysterically. One held each arm and dragged me to the river’s edge. They tore off my loose cotton dress; I had no underwear on. After howling with laughter and firing guns in the air, they crudely touched my body.
— Nick Hahn, Under the Skin
Volunteering abroad is a powerful force for change but only if you choose the right project.
— Volunteer 4 Africa
The Complexities Of Life Caused By Bad Government Leaderships And Parental Mistakes Can Make A Child More Matured Than Their Age. It Happened To Me And It Is Still Happening To So Many Children World Wide. Most Especially, In Africa Where I Come From. This Is Why You See So Many African's Do All Sorts Of Bad Deeds For Surfacing And Surviving To Keep Body And Soul Together.
— Baba Tunde Ojo-Olubiyo
African leaders should not turn the continent into a giant collector of donations and loans from wealthy nations—they must find other plausible means to help established their economic security so as to minimize poverty. This incoherent blunder on the mainland must be scrutinized.
— Duop Chak Wuol
They say it came from Africa, carried in the screams of the enslaved; that it was the death bane of the Tainos, uttered just as one world perished and another began; that it was a demon drawn into Creation through the nightmare door that was cracked open in the Antilles. Fukú americanus, or more colloquially, fukú - generally a curse or doom of some kind; specifically the Curse and the Doom of the New World. No matter what its name or provenance, it is believed that the arrival of Europeans on Hispaniola unleashed fukú on the world, and we've all been in the shit ever since.
— Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Americans of faith should try as hard to save the lives of African women as the lives of unborn fetuses.
— Nicholas D. Kristof, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide
All roads lead to Johannesburg. If you are white or if you are black they lead to Johannesburg. If the crops fail, there is work in Johannesburg. If there are taxes to be paid, there is work in Johannesburg. If the farm is too small to be divided further, some must go to Johannesburg. If there is a child to be born that must be delivered in secret, it can be delivered in Johannesburg.
— Alan Paton, Cry, the Beloved Country
Mummy became a shadow, a woman who had lost herself because she had never found herself. She had always done the right thing, and I had a feeling that the right thing is always going to be the wrong thing, that you find yourself by stepping out of yourself.
— Chloe Thurlow, Girl Trade
He couldn't drive the horror of cannibalism from his brain, just as he couldn't wholly suppress a simple observation that seemed to rebut their savagery: these were the nicest man-eating barbarians a lonely wanderer could ever hope to encounter.
— Monte Reel, Between Man and Beast: An Unlikely Explorer, the Evolution Debates, and the African Adventure That Took the Victorian World by Storm
Indeed, there is something in this valley, some spirit and some life, and much to talk about in the huts. Although nothing has come yet, something is here already.
— Alan Paton, Cry, the Beloved Country
The coffin was handmade from the wood of a single Eucalyptus tree. There were no handles, it rested on the shoulders of six elegant tribesmen. These were Maasai from Kenya, the warrior tribe, known for their courage and endurance. The walkers followed at a respectful distance, the pace was grueling.
— Nick Hahn
If more Africans had eaten missionaries, the continent would be in better shape.
— Maya Angelou, The Heart of a Woman
Take your place, then. Look at what happened from every side and consider all the other ways it could have gone. Consider, even, an Africa unconquered altogether. Imagine those first Portuguese adventurers approaching the shore, spying on the jungle’s edge through their fitted brass lenses. Imagine that by some miracle of dread or reverence they lowered their spyglasses, turned, set their riggings, sailed on. Imagine all who came after doing the same. What would that Africa be now? All I can think of is the other okapi, the one they used to believe in. A unicorn that could look you in the eye.
— Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible
Never argue with a fool, people might not notice the difference
— Niq Mhlongo
Read a different Africa. Love a vibrant Africa.
— Kiru Taye
Some people talk of Africa being a continent cursed not blessed with minerals, but the real curse is the leaders and politicians of Africa
— Peter Mutanda
How can I explain this? Why is it you can never hope to describe the emotion Africa creates?You are lifted.Out of whatever pit, unbound from whatever tie, released from whatever fear. You are lifted and you see it all from above. Your pit, your ties, your fear. you are lifted, you slowly rise like a hot-air balloon, and all you see is the space and the endless possibilities for losing yourself in it.
— Francesca Marciano, Rules of the Wild: A Novel of Africa
Because of my schooling, my fate would always be a little different from my friends.
— Daoud Hari
What is more important for the world right now than preserving ways of living in balance with the earth?
— Daoud Hari, The Translator: A Tribesman's Memoir of Darfur
The schools wear the blank faces of war buildings, their windows blown blind by rocks or guns or mortars. Their plaster is an acne of bullet marks. The huts and small houses crouch open and vulnerable; their doors are flimsy pieces of plyboard or sacks hanging and lank. Children and chickens and dogs scratch in the red, raw soil and stare at us as we drive through their open, eroding lives.
— Alexandra Fuller, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight
The human heart will never wrinkle.
— Marie de Rabutin-Chantal de Sévigné, Letters of Madame de Sévigné to her Daughter and her Friends, Volume 2
Be like the date that grows sweeter and sweeter , even though the soil that nourishes it is rocky and harsh
— Anita Amirrezvani, The Blood of Flowers
The nonviolent approach does not immediately change the heart of the oppressor. It first does something to the hearts and souls of those committed to it. It gives them new self-respect
—  it calls up resources of strength and courage they did not know they had.
Within Siddhartha there slowly grew and ripened the knowledge of what wisdom really was and the goal of his long seeking. It was nothing but a preparation of the soul, a capacity, a secret art of thinking, feeling and breathing thoughts of unity at every moment of life. This thought matured in him slowly, and it was reflected in Vasudeva's old childlike face: harmony, knowledge of the eternal perfection of the world, and unity.
— Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
Leopards don't change their spots
— Anna Jacobs, Beyond The Sunset
Big secrets were catastrophic. However hard you try to hide them, they bob to the surface and you must go over them again and again. They are taken out so often they become worn smooth as a river stone. You have to carry them around you like a baby. The secret grows until you feel like you are a skin that covers it, a thin skin, easily split, ripe
— Karen Foxlee, The Anatomy of Wings
This is because secrets are terrible things. Even the simplest ones
— Karen Foxlee, The Anatomy of Wings
Buffalo Hump knew his son was brave, but that was not enough. If a warrior lacked wisdom, courage alone would not keep him alive for long.
— Larry McMurtry, Comanche Moon
All the stars in the sky cannot worth as much as yours only because it belongs to you.
— Sorin Cerin, Wisdom Collection: The Book of Wisdom
Don't ya wanna hear the secret?' his eyes were narrow and mean, despite the glaze of rum. Louer drained his glass and slammed it to the bar. 'You get happy by learnin' to say 'yes' to what life offers you, but stay happy by rememberin' when to start sayin' 'no'.
— T.B. McKenzie, The Dragon and the Crow
Mate after mate we find ourselves trying to adapt to who they want us to be till eventually we lose our true identity. We spend countless years learning each mate but never take the time to learn ourselves. In the end we know our mates better than we know ourselves. If and when the mate walks away we are stuck living with a stranger, ourselves. If u can't find comfort in urself how can anyone else find comfort in u?
— Al-Saadiq Banks, Block Party 3
we're stuck with freedom. we can't push it off on genes.
— G. Pollack
All the roads of life end in death.
— Sorin Cerin, Wisdom Collection: The Book of Wisdom
Nobody has ever been beyond his own Illusion of Life.
— Sorin Cerin, Wisdom Collection: The Book of Wisdom
Reach high for the stars that hidden in your soul. Dream precedes the goal
— Saeed Jones