African Women Quotes

African women in general need to know that it's OK for them to be the way they are - to see the way they are as a strength, and to be liberated from fear and from silence. ~ Wangari Maathai

She was not a white woman. She was not a Greek ... Until the emergence of the doctrine of white superiority, Cleopatra was generally pictured as a distinctly African woman, dark in color. ~ John Henrik Clarke

It was always the best way of finding out information; just go and ask a woman who keeps her eyes and ears open and who likes to talk. It always worked. It was no use asking men; they simply were not interested enough in other people and the ordinary doings of people. That is why the real historians of Africa had always been the grandmothers, who remembered the lineage and the stories that went with it. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

This I know for a fact: the reason African women have children is so that there's someone else to do the housework. ~ Ben Aaronovitch

Culturally, it is commonplace for African women to work. ~ Richard Attias

Most African women are taught to endure abusive marriages. They say endurance means a good wife but most women endure abusive relationship because they are not empowered economically; they depend on their husbands. ~ Joyce Banda

This is sacred space.
Libation . . . instead of pouring water on the ground, I pour words on the page.
I begin with this libation in honor of all of those unknown and known spirits who surround us. I acknowledge the origins of this land where I am seated while writing this introduction. This land was inhabited by Indigenous people, the very first people to inhabit this land, who lived here for thousands of years before the Europeans arrived and were unfortunately unable to cohabitate without dominating, enslaving, raping, terrorizing, stealing from, relocating, and murder- ing the millions of members of Indigenous nations throughout Turtle Island, which is now known as North America. I write libation to those millions of Indigenous women, men, and children; and those millions of kidnapped and enslaved African women, men, and children whose genocide, confiscated land, centuries of free labor, forced migration, traumatic memories of rape, and sweat, tears, and blood make up the very fiber and foundation of all of the Americas and the Caribbean. ~ Aishah Shahidah Simmons

Let me be very blunt: the heterosexual transmission of AIDS is, in Africa, a function of truly pathological promiscuity. So this is really a violence issue - not the same violence we deal with in Boston, where teenagers stab and shoot each other, but the violence of African men who are killing themselves, and killing African women and children, with pathological promiscuity. ~ Eugene Rivers

Mobile phone technology can help to bring financial services to the 80 percent of African women who do not have a bank account and bolster the growth of the world's poorest continent. It's not just about empowering women, it's about economic growth. Unless we can make access to finance easier for women in their businesses, we will be missing out on a significant portion of growth within our economies ~ Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala

There are more than 100 million African women who go topless at some point in the day, each and every day, to honor both God and our ancestors. So being in a country like America where nothing is hated more than the image of the black woman, even by black people'because her womb produces the black man and makes us black'I find it of grave importance to implement African images, and especially to produce media images that acknowledge the sexual power and fertility of black women. ~ Kola Boof

When I went back home, I was constantly being reminded, I'm an African woman, and so there are certain things I shouldn't do, certain ambitions that I should not entertain. That was a problem for me because I had never thought of myself as an African woman, never thought of myself as a woman to begin with. For me the limit was my capacity, my capability. ~ Wangari Maathai

The division of the world which followed defined certain parts of the world as 'nature', that is, as savage, uncontrolled and, therefore, open for exploitation and civilizing efforts… the process of naturalization' did not affect only the colonies as a whole and women of the working class the women of the bourgeoisie also were defined into nature as mere breeders and rearers of the heirs of the capitalist class. But in contrast to the African women who were seen as part of 'savage' nature, the bourgeois women were seen as 'domesticated'
nature. ~ Maria Mies

Stop looking for healing in places

Healing is not static
Healing is a journey ~ Malebo Sephodi

It was easy to persecute me without people feeling ashamed. It was easy to vilify me and project me as a woman who was not following the tradition of a 'good African woman' and as a highly educated elitist who was trying to show innocent African women ways of doing things that were not acceptable to African men. ~ Wangari Maathai

From the darkness we become stars, we behold the misery and mystery from the worlds we possess and build up fire from the glow and coils of our black souls, the Sun. ~ Goitsemang Mvula

Equal pay for equal work continues to be seen as applying to equal pay for men and women in the same occupation, while the larger point of continuing relevance in our day is that some occupations have depressed wages because women are the chief employee. The former is a pattern of sex discrimination, the latter of institutionalized sexism. ~ Alice S. Rossi

What a woman wants is a reaction. What a man wants is a woman. ~ Charles Bukowski

The odd superstitions touched upon were all prevalent among children and slaves in the West at the period of this story - that is to say, thirty or forty years ago. Although my book is intended mainly for the entertainment of boys and girls, I hope it will not be shunned by men and women on that account, for part of my plan has been to try to pleasantly remind adults of what they once were themselves, and of how they felt and thought and talked, and what queer enterprises they sometimes engaged in. THE AUTHOR. HARTFORD, 1876. CHAPTER I "TOM!" No answer. "TOM!" No answer. "What's gone with that boy, I wonder? You TOM! ~ Mark Twain

It would not be going too far to assert that ... conflict confronts every woman who ventures upon a career of her own and who is ... unwilling to pay for her daring with the renunciation of her femininity. ~ Karen Horney

It began to strike me that the point of my education was a kind of discomfort, was the process that would not award me my own especial Dream but would break all the dreams, all the comforting myths of Africa, of America, and everywhere, and would leave me only with humanity in all its terribleness. And there was so much terrible out there, even among us. You must understand this. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

I'm a bloodydamn Helldiver with an army of giant, mildly psychotic women behind me and a fleet of state-of-the-art warships crewed by pissed-off pirates, engineers, techs, and former slaves. ~ Pierce Brown

I've been called the Women's Auxiliary of the Brat Pack. ~ Molly Ringwald

I'd rather be a face for happiness and doing things that you have a passion for, rather than faking it and pretending like I'm this face of women's basketball, when I can't stand the sport at all. ~ Elena Delle Donne

A sexual revolution begins with the emancipation of women, who are the chief victims of patriarchy, and also with the ending of homosexual oppression. ~ Kate Millett

Me and Zachary used to share women. I'm surprised he didn't tell you 'bout that."
Morgan's eyes snapped over to Carhart and her hands froze on the sweater that she'd grabbed from the sofa.
Carhart just rolled his eyes. "He's lying."
Emilio laughed and didn't deny it. "Oh, right. That was Douglas."
"What?" Morgan looked even more scandalized now. "Instructor Ferguson? ~ Ais

After all, then, she was not a clever woman, - not more clever than other women around her! ~ Anthony Trollope

The truth is, I often like women. I like their unconventionality. I like their completeness. I like their anonymity. ~ Virginia Woolf

Leave it to women to be cryptic rather than straightforward ~ Kaye Dacus

When I sing, it sounds like I'm gargling spaghetti. Is it any wonder that women lust after me and mail me their panties? (Mail to: Jarod Kintz/12358 Fibonacci Way/Jacksonville, Fl 32258) ~ Jarod Kintz

Because women don't have to be men's equals to be considered contenders; they have to be better. That's the lie of it all. You have to be better to prove yourself worthy of being equal. ~ Mackenzi Lee

A crowd of women around me doing the ocean of women's work that never subsided and never changed and always swallowed whatever time you gave it and wanted more, another hungry body of water. I submerged into it like a ritual bath and let it close over my head gladly. ~ Naomi Novik

History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men. What is history? History is women following behind with the bucket. ~ Alan Bennett

I don't think that I would consider myself a feminist. I think that I certainly believe in equal rights, I believe that women are just as capable, if not more so in a lot of different dimensions, but I don't, I think have, sort of, the militant drive and the sort of, the chip on the shoulder that sometimes comes with that. ~ Marissa Mayer

Most women had the one thing in common: they had great pain when they gave birth to their children. This should make a bond that held them all together; it should make them love and protect each other against the man-world. But it was not so. It seemed like their great birth pains shrank their hearts and their souls. They stuck together for only one thing: to trample on some other woman ... whether it was by throwing stones or by mean gossip. It was the only kind of loyalty they seemed to have. Men were different. They might hate each other but they stuck together against the world and against any woman who would ensnare one of them. ~ Betty Smith

And I'm clued into the fact that no matter how hard I can make you come, no really good orgasm is gonna erase your perceptions of yourself and replace them with how I see you. I know what I got on my hands. I also know that most women who look like you have their heads up their asses in a different, far more annoying way. So the bright side is, what happened to you, even though you're as beautiful as you are, you'll never think your shit doesn't stink. And I gotta say, sweetheart, I get your sweet, I get your attitude, I get your mouth and I get all that without conceit and you thinkin' you can lead me around by my dick, so this is not a bad thing at all. ~ Kristen Ashley

Sexism is so five minutes ago. I think for the most part, people accept that women are as competent as men. ~ Katie Couric

Till it has loved, no man or woman can become itself. ~ Emily Dickinson

I do hope that for the young women watching the show they know it is heightened reality and just grown ups playing teenagers. That's not how it is supposed to go. Just keep it to yourself. ~ Hilarie Burton

Pornography is not egalitarian and gender-free. It is predicated upon the inequality of women and is the propaganda that makes that inequality sexy. For women to find passive, objectified men sexy in large enough numbers to make a pornography industry based upon such images viable, would require the reconstruction of women's sexuality into a ruling-class sexuality. In an egalitarian society objectification would not exist and therefore the particular buzz provided by pornography, the excitement of eroticised dominance for the ruling class, would be unimaginable. ~ Sheila Jeffreys

We didn't educate women, because the leaders then didn't think they were educable. That changed when a shortage of teachers developed, because men didn't get paid enough to teach school. Then men, who held the positions of power, sent women to teachers' colleges. ~ John Shelby Spong

She turned to put the basket of bread on the table and saw Brian, and the clutch of mums and zinnias he held in his hand.
"It seemed to call for them," he said.
She stared at the cheerful fall bloossoms, then up into his face. "You picked me flowers."
The sheer disbelief in her voice had him moving his shoulders restlessly. "Well,you made me dinner, with wine and candles and the whole of it. Bedsides, they're your flowers anyway."
"No,they're not." Drowning in love she set the basket down, waited. "Until you give them to me."
"I'll never understand why women are so sensitive over posies." He held them out.
"Thank you." She closed her eyes, buried her face in them. She wanted to remember the exact fragrance, the exact texture. Then lowering them again, she lifted her mouth to his for a kiss. Rubbed her cheek against his.
His arms came around her so suddenly, so tightly, she gasped. "Brian? What is it?"
That gesture,the simple and sweet gesture of cheek against cheek nearly destroyed him. "It's nothing. I just like the way you feel against me when I hold you."
"Hold me any tighter,I'll be through you. ~ Nora Roberts

I find more interesting roles for women in period pieces. I do personally like watching period films; I think you can really get lost in the fantasy of them. ~ Keira Knightley

So here is what I see when we reclaim the church ladies: a woman loved and free is beautiful. She is laughing with her sisters, and together they are telling their stories, revealing their scars and their wounds, the places where they don't have it figured out. They are nurturers, creating a haven where the young, the broken, the tenderhearted, and the at-risk can flourish. These women are dancing and worshiping, hands high, faces tipped toward heaven, tears streaming. They are celebrating all shapes and sizes, talking frankly and respectfully about sexuality and body image, promising to stop calling themselves fat. They are saving babies tossed in rubbish heaps, rescuing child soldiers, supporting mamas trying to make ends meet halfway around the world, thinking of justice when they buy their daily coffee. They are fighting sex trafficking. They are pastoring and counseling. They are choosing life consistently, building hope, doing the hard work of transformation in themselves. They are shaking off the silence of shame and throwing open the prison doors of physical and sexual abuse, addictions, eating disorders, and suicidal depression. Poverty and despair are being unlocked - these women know there are many hands helping turn that key. There isn't much complaining about husbands and chores, cattiness, or jealousy when a woman knows she is loved for her true self. She is lit up with something bigger than what the world offers, refusing to be intimidated into silence or despa ~ Sarah Bessey

If you get three women and a dog together and they all mate together they're not gonna have a baby ~ Gordon Klingenschmitt

Technology may be traditionally perceived as a male-dominated industry, but it won't always be that way. Every day we see more and more powerful women leaders boasting outstanding achievements. ~ Clara Shih

The cities are full of women falling for the cool loser: the man trafficking in "edgy" so women cut him slack in his more loathsome behaviors. Christ, I know so many, it's sad. Please accept my flaws (and pay my rent) because I can play guitar! Badly. ~ Greg Gutfeld

At worst, we're considered selfish or immature; women who don't want to have children are regarded as unnatural, traitors to their sex, if not the species. ~ Tim Kreider

If two men or two women can marry, then there is no way a court could deny three men and two women or any combination thereof. ~ James Dobson

I was always taught them when you're lucky enough to learn something or have some advantage you should share it. ~ Areva Martin

What was the secret of Grandpa's charm? I began to understand only years later. He possessed a quality that is hardly ever found among men, a marvelous quality that for many women is the sexiest in a man:

He listened.

He did not just politely pretend to listen, while impatiently waiting for her to finish what she was saying and shut up.

He did not break into his partner's sentence and finish it for her.

He did not cut in to sum up what she was saying so as to move on to another subject.

He did not let his interlocutress talk into thin air while he prepared in his head the reply he would make when she finally finished.

He did not pretend to be interested or entertained, he really was. Nu, what: he had an inexhaustible curiosity.

He was not impatient. He did not attempt to deflect the conversation from her petty concerns to his own important ones.

On the contrary: he loved her concerns. He always enjoyed waiting for her, and if she needed to take her time he took pleasure in all her contortions.

He was in no hurry, and he never rushed her. He would wait for her to finish, and even when she had finished, he did not pounce or grab but enjoyed waiting in case there was something more, in case she was carried along on another wave.

He loved to let her take him by the hand and lead him to her own places, at her own pace. He loved to be her accompanist.

He loved ge ~ Amos Oz

The world owes an ecological debt to the African continent. ~ Francois Hollande