African Canadian Quotes

The moon twangs its silver strings;
The river swoons into town;
The wind beds down in the pines,
Covers itself with stars. ~ George Elliott Clarke

It would be better not to know so many things than to know so many things that are not so. ~ Felix Okoye

Do you feel it? The connection between us? The pull? The power of our link? ~ N.D. Jones

This epic is a humble appeal to this great continent, Africa: May we reclaim our rich and resplendent narrative; our foundation, our voice, our magnitude, our honour, our pride, our wisdom, our traditions, our past, our exceptional uniqueness, our failings, our triumphs and finally when all is said and done, our glory. ~ N.K. Read

The curious beauty of African music is that it uplifts even as it tells a sad tale. You may be poor, you may have only a ramshackle house, you may have lost your job, but that song gives you hope. ~ Nelson Mandela

Poets are accepted in Canada as practically nowhere else in the West because of their place in an officially supported and popularly endorsed Canadian culture. Yet, they are still bitter and argumentative, as poets elsewhere are, because they have no audience as such, only a sanctioned role in the cultural scheme of things. ~ George Fetherling

Racism is not an excuse to not do the best you can. ~ Arthur Ashe

We cannot proclaim this century the African Century and then ignore the AIDS pandemic, as some political leaders are apt to do. To claim this century the African Century is to declare war on AIDS. ~ Nelson Mandela

If I know a song of Africa, - I thought, - of the Giraffe, and the African new moon lying on her back, of the ploughs in the fields, and the sweaty faces of the coffee-pickers, does Africa know a song of me? Would the air over the plain quiver with a colour that I had had on, or the children invent a game in which my name was, or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel of the drive that was like me, or would the eagles of Ngong look out for me? I ~ Karen Blixen

Let's say you have some chicken stock and you're making soup, and out of everything you can taste, some of the things you put in and some of the things you don't. So you start out with an African spice then you hear some Brazilian music, so then it changes. Then you hear Jamaican and it changes again. And the result depends on how much of each spice you put into it. Now, I've been putting in spices since I started playing professionally in 1945. ~ Herbie Mann

The current fast food fuss obscures the reality that such foods are ancient. Fried kibbeh, sausages, olives, nuts, small pizzas, and flat breads have been sold on the streets of Middle Eastern and North African cities for a cycle of centuries; Marco Polo reported barbequed meats, deep-fried delicacies, and even roast lamb for sale in Chinese markets. ~ Kenneth F. Kiple

I love Canada. I am from Canada. I will bash the Canadian government but never Canada. ~ Jason Priestley

Cumbia is a beautiful rhythm. It's a music that has indigenous, African and European components. It's played in all of America - from Argentina to the U.S. It has mutated and been nurtured by everyone who comes across it. ~ Juan Campodonico

Literature is indispensable to the world. The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way a person looks at reality, then you can change it. ~ James Baldwin

It's hard to believe that the relaxing, recreational endeavor of reading a good book that so many of us savor and take for granted was, for more than two hundred years, not only illegal for most African Americans enslaved in many states of the South, but also punishable by death. ~ Stephanie Stokes Oliver

White supremacy, over time, became a religion of sorts. Faith in the idea that people of the African race were bestial, that whites were inherently superior, and that slavery was, in fact, for black's own good, served to alleviate the white conscience and reconcile the tension between slavery and the democratic ideals espoused by whites in the so-called New World. There was no contradiction in the bold claim made by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence that 'all men are created equal' if Africans were not really people. ~ Michelle Alexander

To hate is human,
to love is divine.
To destroy is human,
to build is divine.
To fall is human,
to rise is divine.

To break is human,
to heal is divine.
To take is human,
to give is divine.
To feel is human,
to experience is divine. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

I think there's a lot of things that occur within the African-American community, that we would prefer to stay within the African-American community - that we get a little nervous when you start having scenes or dialogue that we know is going to be viewed and heard on a national or global scale. ~ Gabrielle Union

I think there's a certain objectivity that comes from being Canadian. You're partly British and partly American; you have a good bird's-eye view of both countries. So much of the comedy that comes out of Canada is impersonation - it's less 'look at me' than it is 'look at me playing other people.' ~ Eric McCormack

Often, when an elephant has just died, other elephants will back up to touch its carcass gently with their hind feet, then cover the body with dirt and sticks, and stand guard. (Intriguingly, elephants have done the same to the bodies of people that they either find dead or have killed. One young orphaned elephant in a South African sanctuary shrieked and moaned when it discovered the buried remains of its daily companion, a rhinoceros, that poachers had killed for its horn.) Chimpanzees, gorillas, some corvids, and dolphins also spend time with their dead, but overall, most species do not.* ~ Virginia Morell

I say "on principle" [regarding 'lesbian writer'] because whenever you get one of your minority labels applied, like "Irish Writer," "Canadian Writer," "Woman Writer," "Lesbian Writer" - any of those categories - you always slightly wince because you're afraid that people will think that means you're only going to write about Canada or Ireland, you know. ~ Emma Donoghue

I never experimented with the hoddu like I wanted to do. Like on the song "Allah Addu," the hoddu and the voice is something that belongs to West African culture. When you go to the north of Mali, in the past it was just the singer and one instrument player. We never really did have that on our CDs. On some other songs, like "Laare Yoo," we have a whole section of hoddu, something like four of them playing together. ~ Baaba Maal

That as much as we're afraid of New World Order coming and of Canada and America joining together, that if we don't learn the lessons from the past then it doesn't matter what you want to call it: the North American Union or the South American Union, or the European Union, or the African Union ... it doesn't matter what you call it as long as the arrangement remains the same. ~ Immortal Technique

His lithe and lethal grace is hypnotic, too, in the way he moves like a leopard in the African grass, even if it's just striding down a sidewalk. I got sucked into all this, but I can't afford to let it ... ~ Jasinda Wilder

I loved 'Ghana Must Go' by Taiye Selasi. It's about a first-generation African family living in America that has to return home to Nigeria when their estranged father passes away. ~ Uzo Aduba

Frank Zhang, you should know!" Frank flinched. "I should?" "A son of Ares stood here!" Hedge cried indignantly. "I'm Roman ... so Mars, actually." "Whatever! Famous spot in the American Civil War!" "I'm Canadian, actually. ~ Rick Riordan

I am a South African, a nation which is the result of an African graft on European stock and which is the product of its instinct and ability to maintain civilized values and standards amongst the aliens'. ~ Gary Player

Palermo is dotted everywhere with frittura shacks- street carts and storefronts specializing in fried foods of all shapes and cardiac impacts. On the fringes of the Ballarò market are bars serving pane e panelle, fried wedges of mashed chickpeas combined with potato fritters and stuffed into a roll the size of a catcher's mitt. This is how the vendors start their days; this is how you should start yours, too. If fried chickpea sandwiches don't register as breakfast food, consider an early evening at Friggitoria Chiluzzo, posted on a plastic stool with a pack of locals, knocking back beers with plates of fried artichokes and arancini, glorious balls of saffron-stained rice stuffed with ragù and fried golden- another delicious ode to Africa.
Indeed, frying food is one of the favorite pastimes of the palermitani, and they do it- as all great frying should be done- with a mix of skill and reckless abandon. Ganci is among the city's most beloved oil baths, a sliver of a store offering more calories per square foot than anywhere I've ever eaten. You can smell the mischief a block before you hit the front door: pizza topped with french fries and fried eggplant, fried rice balls stuffed with ham and cubes of mozzarella, and a ghastly concoction called spiedino that involves a brick of béchamel and meat sauce coated in bread crumbs and fried until you could break someone's window with it. ~ Matt Goulding

Louis Brandeis never had the opportunity - or he never sought the opportunity I should say - to work closely with African American lawyers. He was also a Southern Democrat, you know, at a time when both parties were supportive of segregation. ~ Jeffrey Rosen

Robert Farris Thompson, America's most prominent historian of African art, says that funky is derived from the Ki-Kongo lu-fuki, meaning "positive sweat" of the sort you get from dancing or having sex, but not working. One's mojo, which has to be "working" to attract a lover, is Ki-Kongo for "soul." Boogie comes from mbugi, meaning "devilishly good." And both jazz and jism likely derive from dinza, the Ki-Kongo word for "to ejaculate. ~ Christopher Ryan

We need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it's like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old - and that's the criterion by which I'll be selecting my judges. ~ Barack Obama

I love Canadians. I think we make an impact around the world just when people meet us, and whenever I meet another Canadian, I see it as well. ~ Kiesza

Truth has nowhere to hide in the world.
Time has nowhere to hide in the stars.
Fate has nowhere to hide in the universe.

Nature has nowhere to hide in the world.
Reality has nowhere to hide in the stars.
God has nowhere to hide in the universe.

Land has nowhere to hide in the world.
Light has nowhere to hide in the stars.
Love has nowhere to hide in the universe.

Imagination has nowhere to hide in the world.
Science has nowhere to hide in the stars.
Spirituality has nowhere to hide in the universe.

Intelligence has nowhere to hide in the world.
Creation has nowhere to hide in the stars.
Life has nowhere to hide in the universe.

Silence has nowhere to hide in the world.
Sound has nowhere to hide in the stars.
Awareness has nowhere to hide in the universe.

The past has nowhere to hide in the world.
The present has nowhere to hide in the stars.
The future has nowhere to hide in the universe.

Chance has nowhere to hide in the world.
Destiny has nowhere to hide in the stars.
Eternity has nowhere to hide in the universe. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

Danced healing rituals (in African village compounds, temple courtyards, dance-therapy studios, public theaters, and other social settings) reinvoke old traumas for exorcism and the transformation of fear, convince people that evil is gone or possible to dissipate, and reaffirm communal solidarity and a sense of well-being. ~ Judith Lynne Hanna

When I stand on a street in a Canadian city and look across the street, it couldn't be anywhere but Canada, but how can I prove it? ~ Margaret Mead

Those who have not lived in New Orleans have missed an incredible, glorious, vital city
a place with an energy unlike anywhere else in the world, a majority-African American city where resistance to white supremacy has cultivated and supported a generous, subversive, and unique culture of vivid beauty. From jazz, blues, and and hip-hop to secondlines, Mardi Gras Indians, jazz funerals, and the citywide tradition of red beans and rice on Monday nights, New Orleans is a place of art and music and food and traditions and sexuality and liberation. ~ Jordan Flaherty

I am an invisible man. No I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allen Poe: Nor am I one of your Hollywood movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids, and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, simply because people refuse to see me. ~ Ralph Ellison

I am famous because I am an African American jazz artist. ~ Nat King Cole

Seeking more information, I walked through the market listening to the gossip and discovered that our new general, the man sent to quell the unrest in the east, was the second son of a provincial tax collector whose only claims to recognition were that he had commanded some legions in Britain in the heady, early days of the invasion, that his brother had once stood for consul, and that he had been a governor in some African province, where the locals had thrown turnips at him.
Despairing, I returned to the house, and that despair deepened later when Horgias came home with the news that our new paragon of martial virtue had until recently been hiding in Greece, in disgrace for having fallen asleep during one of Nero's recitals in the theatre. ~ M.C. Scott

I know that no matter how liberal or progressive I profess to be, no matter how successfully, how diligently I seek to be enlightened and nuanced in my understanding of the world and those around me, I know that there still is a tiny, virulent nugget, a germ of prejudice that exists deep within me - the product of those stereotypes and awful jokes of childhood and adolescence, and that it must always be powerfully held at bay by reason, understanding and love. ~ Michael Winship

In 2008, Barack Obama had all the wind at his back, everything going for him. He was an African-American at a time when the country was eager to do that. The Republicans had, in the view of many of us, pretty much disgraced themselves at home and abroad for eight years. ~ George Will

There's no happy ending ... Nevertheless, we might well say that is exactly Harriet Beecher Stowe's point. In 1852 slavery had not been abolished. Slaves were still on the plantations and many of them were in the hands of people like Legree. Her book was written to shame the collective conscience of America into action against an atrocity which was still continuing. So a happy ending would have been, frankly, a lie and a betrayal. ...

Most of the charges are basically true. Stowe did stereotype. She did sentimentalize. She offered a role model which later offended African American pride. On the other hand, what she did worked. She wasn't trying to provide a role model for African Americans. She was trying to make white Americans ashamed of themselves. ...

Perhaps the short answer to her critics is to ask, "Do you want glory, approval, all those good things? Or do you want to achieve your goal? ~ Thomas A. Shippey

No book can convey the depths of the black experience without including material from the oppressed group. Yet not one textbook in my original sample let African Americans speak for themselves. ~ James W. Loewen

African agriculture today is among, or is, the most under-capitalized in the world. Only seven percent of arable land in Africa is irrigated, compared to 40 percent in Asia. ~ Eleni Zaude Gabre-Madhin

At some point I was a Happy African Feminist Who Does Not Hate Men and Who Likes to Wear Lip Gloss and High Heels for Herself and Not For Men. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I think the bottom of the totem pole is African-American women, or women of colour. I think they get the least opportunities in Hollywood. ~ Denzel Washington