African Proverbs Quotes

There is an old African proverb that says if you want to go quickly, go alone, if you want to go far, go together. We have to go far, quickly, and that means we have to quickly find a way to change the world's consciousness about exactly what we are facing and how we have to work to solve it. ~ Al Gore

A man who pays respect to the great paves the way for his own greatness ~ Chinua Achebe

You must act as if it's impossible to fail. ~ Ashanti

Faced with what seems like an impossible task, a group of folks will do well to remember the African proverb: When spider webs unite they can tie up a lion. ~ Johnnetta B. Cole

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. ~ Ngugi Wa Thiongo

Consider the statistics that African American Males are stopped by the police more often, convicted for crimes more often and draw prison more often and draw longer prison sentences more often than their white counterparts. ~ The Prophet Of Life

May your neighbors respect you, Trouble neglect you, The angels protect you, And heaven accept you. Irish blessing ~ Janice Thompson

They tried to get me to hate white people, but someone would always come along & spoil it. ~ Thelonious Monk

I am half Puerto Rican, a quarter German and a quarter black. That was always a big issue for me - being mixed race - because casting directors tended to be very like, 'OK, are you Hispanic for this role?' 'Or is she going to be African American?' ~ Naya Rivera

In their hearts humans plan their course, but the LORD establishes their steps. PROVERBS 16:9 ~ Mark Batterson

I am a colored woman or a Negro woman. Either one is OK. People dislike those words now. Today these use this term African American. It wouldn't occur to me to use that. I prefer to think of myself as an American, that's all! ~ Annie Elizabeth Delany

Men who have sacrifice their well-being, and even their lives, for the cause of truth or the public good, are, from an empirical point of view - which scorn ("fait fi", Fr.) virtue and altruism - regarded as insane or fools; but, from a moral standpoint, they are heros who do honour ("qui honorent", Fr.) humanity. ~ African Spir

Clearly, a large number of African-Americans don't have faith that the laws are being executed fairly in Ferguson, and that's a problem ... We need to ensure Africans-Americans feel confident in the rule of law. ~ Claire McCaskill

In the 1800s, the United States was divided over the issue of slavery. The North wanted the country to end all slavery. But the South wanted to keep slaves because more than four million African-American slaves worked in the huge plantation fields there. This disagreement between the North and South led to the Civil War. Jack ~ Mary Pope Osborne

I have Native American blood. I have African blood. I have European blood. ~ Tamara Tunie

The gap that was created during those transatlantic voyages hundreds of years ago.

That gap is the matrix of Saudade – The Longing, I think, that all Africans in the West have, that is at the root of the blues and jazz and soul and rap. If you listen you can hear it, elusive, fleeting, full of melancholy anger. ~ Bonnie Greer

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

My passion is more about bringing the stories out from the African continent mixed with the West. ~ Djimon Hounsou

Proverbs may be said to be the abridgment of wisdom. ~ Joseph Joubert

Once, the Dream's parameters were caged by technology and by the limits of horsepower and wind. But the Dreamers have improved themselves, and the damming of seas for voltage, the extraction of coal, the transmuting of oil into food, have enabled an expansion in plunder with no known precedent. And this revolution has freed the Dreamers to plunder no just the bodies of humans but the body of Earth itself. The Earth is not our creation. It has no respect for us. It has no use for us. And its vengeance is not the fire in the cities but the fire in the sky. Something more fierce than Marcus Garvey is riding on the whirlwind. Something more awful than all our African ancestors is rising with the seas. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

In my mother's church, everybody read the Bible and it was mostly about music. My mother had the most beautiful voice I have ever heard in my life. She could sing anything - classical, jazz, blues, opera. And people came from long distances to that little church she went to - African Methodist Episcopal, the AME church she belonged to - just hear her. ~ Toni Morrison

I just had a normal African childhood; we played football a lot, but it was always in the street and always without shoes. Boots were very expensive, and when there are seven in your family, and you say you want to buy a pair, your father wants to kill you. ~ Yaya Toure

I prayed that our growth would be as strong and determined as the seeds of coconut palms, boldly reaching skyward toward the sun diligently boring deeper into the earth to secure a firm foundation for the beautiful, durable, fruit-bearing trees they would become. For me, Mhonda was the place to continue the growth of the still young but strong roots of my tree planted in Kifungilo. This was my life now, the life I'd prayed for, the life that would provide me with an education and would open doors. I wanted this life very much. I told my wavering spirit to bear with me because, just like the coconut palm, I would sway and bend and bruise, but I would survive. I would have to become the tree in the African saying: 'The tree that bends with the wind does not break. ~ Maria Nhambu

A lesson in folly is worth two in wisdom. ~ Tom Stoppard

The contribution of West African languages to Ebonics is absolutely infinitesimal. What it actually is is a very interesting hybrid of regional dialects of Great Britain that slaves in America were exposed to because they often worked alongside the indentured servants who spoke those dialects that we often learn about in school. ~ John McWhorter

People judge you by your color, but God judges you by your deeds. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

Beyond [Barack Obama] having made history as the first African-American president, I hope that he gets re-elected for what he does while in office, not for his skin color. I certainly believe he has the capacity. ~ Lenny Kravitz

When we rise in the morning ... at the table we drink coffee which is provided to us by a South American, or tea by a Chinese, or cocoa by a West African; before we leave for our jobs we are already beholden to more than half the world. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Will African-Americans break away from the pack thinking and reject immorality
because that's the reason the family's breaking apart
alcohol, drugs, infidelity. You have to reject that, and it doesn't seem
and I'm broadly speaking here, but a lot of African-Americans won't reject it ~ Bill O'Reilly

Rian Malan was one of the first younger writers to perceive and write about a darkness in the South African psyche that goes deeper than mere politics. To some extent, that's my territory, too. ~ Damon Galgut

Proverbs 18:10, "The name of the LORD is a strong tower. ~ James MacDonald

I think one of the political problems we have in this country is the perspective that all soccer moms think alike, all African-Americans think alike. ~ Anne Northup

I am the first African-American chairman of any major conservation organization in history. That's a big step. ~ Jerome Ringo

We recriminalized black life. Incarceration rates since the 1908s have gone through the roof, overwhelmingly black males, women and Hispanics to some extent. Essentially re-doing what happened under Reconstruction. That's the history of African Americans - so how can any one say there's no problem. Sure, racism is serious, but it's worse than that. ~ Noam Chomsky

Haste is from the Devil. ~ Idries Shah

For poetry and I are one
To separate is to decapitate
For my poetry is forever. ~ Kerry D. Brackett

I took one look at him, my mouth started watering and my panties moistened with thick fluid as if he had touched my sensation and made me instantaneously combust. ~ Siva D.

The insidious aid culture has left African countries more debt-laden, more inflation-prone, more vulnerable to the vagaries of the currency markets and more unattractive to higher-quality investment. ~ Dambisa Moyo

When we were in D.C. my daddy used to cut his hair with a bowl. Crucial. If you're African, Haitan, Jamaican or even more poor than the people in the project, you'll know about that. ~ Wale

Obama was elected in a flourish of promise that many in the African-American community believed would help not only to symbolize African-American progress since the Civil War and Civil Rights Acts but that his presidency would result in doors opening in the halls of power as had never been seen before by black America. ~ Douglas Wilder

I'm not perfect... but I am perfectly fine with being myself. ~ Kayambila Mpulamasaka

The times today are too dangerous for the young and the smart to be not bothered. Know the truth. Remember, "We can deny the truth. But, we can't avoid it." We have been there; we have all been there. Ask a female friend who is fighting for a better pay scale, ask the father of an immigrant who is nervous about the future of his daughter, ask a gay friend who is fighting for the right to marry, ask an African-American friend who wants her younger brother to be unafraid and proud, ask a homeless worker in Bangladesh whose house just got swept by rising sea levels, ask a young child in Beijing who breathes an air polluted by fossil fuels, ask a child labor in India who works ten hours and twelve hours to get two square meals a day. And, when you ask, you will know. You will know why we need to take it personally. ~ Sharad Vivek Sagar

Many women do noble things, but you surpass them all. charm is deceptive, beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised ~ Anonymous

The breezes of the West African night were intimate and shy, licking the hair, sweeping through cotton dresses with unseemly intimacy, then disappearing into the utter blackness. ~ Maya Angelou

A lot of African wildlife is very big. If you're protecting the big stuff, you're usually protecting the small stuff, too. ~ Patrick Bergin

There is something so deeply visceral about libraries for me-rooms and rooms full of people dreaming and remembering. ~ Jacqueline Woodson

The idea of a hypnotic riff as the prime mover of a piece of music has been around for a long time, whether you're talking about the Delta blues or music from Middle Eastern and African cultures. ~ Jimmy Page

The feeling, all encompassing, safe and warm like a blanket permanently draped over her shoulders, follows her around. She takes it into the shower, to meals with her mother and sister, to work as she reads out the news script, her voice never faltering. ~ Zainab Omaki

I believe that we have reached a stage in life in the economic development of Africa where moving forward is perilous, moving backwards is cowardice and standing still is suicidal but we must persevere because winners do not quit and quitter never win. ~ Patrick L.O. Lumumba

Putting the Lost Cause to work, however, necessitated a good measure of willful forgetting. Confederate memorialists proved equal to the task. "The world has been wickedly taught and foolishly believes that we resorted to war solely to preserve our institution of African slavery," General John S. Preston told a SASC meeting in Columbia in 1870. If anyone knew what had led to the Civil War, it was Preston, who not only attended the South Carolina Secession Convention but also served as the state's official delegate to Virginia's secession convention. The North and South were antagonistic societies whose differences were fundamentally rooted in slavery and race, he had told the Virginia convention in February 1861. But a decade later, Preston preached that slavery had not been the animating cause of secession at all. ~ Ethan J. Kytle

Crime is fast destroying the moral fabric of South African cities, and is becoming a major threat to South African democracy as well as the prominent manifestation of a "class war" that is largely a continuation of the "race war" of yesterday. ~ Achille Mbembe