Equatorial Africa Quotes

Free trade and Christianity, it's the German East Africa Company, it's French Equatorial Africa, it's the Belgians cutting down the Congo population from twenty million to ten in barely twenty years, by nineteen fourteen there's nothing left to plunder in Africa so they go to war with each other in Europe instead that's what the whole damned first world war was all ab ... ~ William Gaddis

As a boy, Fat Charlie had imagined Mrs. Dunwiddy in Equatorial Africa, peering disapprovingly through her thick spectacles at the newly evolved hominids. "Keep out of my front yard," she would tell a recently evolved and rather nervous specimen of Homo habilis, "or I am going to belt you around your ear hole, I can tell you. ~ Neil Gaiman

there, singing and tapping in the blacksnakes, in the swamp, she has an odd vision. She sees the beats of the songs, the Calinda beat, the Bamboula beat, all the rhythms of equatorial Africa spreading slowly across this midnight land until the whole country shivers and swings to the beats of the old gods whose realms she had left. And even that, she understands somehow, in the swamp, even that will not be enough. ~ Neil Gaiman

The bigger things get the smaller and duller or flatter the globe gets. It is getting to be all one blasted little provincial suburb. When they have introduced American sanitation, morale-pep, feminism, and mass production throughout the Near East, Middle East, Far East, U.S.S.R., the Pampas, el Gran Chaco, the Danubian Basin, Equatorial Africa, Hirther Further and Inner Mumbo-land, Gondhwannaland, Lhasas, and the villages of darkest Berkshire, how happy we shall be . At any rate it out to cut down travel. There will be nowhere to go. So people will (I opine) go all the faster. (leter 53) ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

It is ironic that none of those who took issue with Schweitzer's theology and cursed his writings gave up fame and fortune or membership in the highest stratum of German society to live among the poorest of the poor. They prepared their critiques in the comfort of the pastor's study or the university library, while Schweitzer nailed patches of tin on the roof of his free medical clinic at Lambarene by the banks of the Ogoove River. Theologians who sat in endowed chairs took his Christology to task, while he scraped infectious lesions off blue-black natives in the steaming misery of equatorial Africa.

Albert Schweitzer deserves to be remembered as the greatest Christian of the twentieth century, yet he did not believe in literal miracles - the blood atonement, the bodily resurrection, or the second coming, just to name a few. All he did was walk away from everything the world calls good to follow Jesus. ~ Robin Meyers

X is not my real name, but if you study history you'll find why no black man in the western hemisphere knows his real name. Some of his ancestors kidnapped our ancestors from Africa, and took us into the western hemisphere and sold us there. And our names were stripped from us and so today we don't know who we really are. I am one of those who admit it and so I just put X up there to keep from wearing his name. ~ Malcolm X

I have an affinity for Africa, especially East Africa, and Kansas looks very much like that. ~ Bill Kurtis

Yes, being black is a full-time job: sometimes you are invisible, other times you are hyper-visible," he says. "Sometimes you are welcome, other times you are not. The thermostat is always moving and you have to keep adapting to find some comfort level. Richard Pryor used to talk about going to Africa and people there telling him he was white. Even though he was black, he just wasn't black enough. ~ Paul Beatty

I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills. ~ Karen Blixen

Singapore, Switzerland, Austria, and many of the European countries that we all admire today, don't have one tenth of the natural resources that African countries have. Yet, because of the principles of truth and honesty, they have been able to build some of the most civilized societies in the modern world. ~ Sunday Adelaja

Truth changes what you see.
Experience changes what you feel.
Illumination changes what you experience.

Consciousness changes what you see.
Awareness changes what you feel.
Life changes what you experience.

Light changes what you see.
Freedom changes what you feel.
Peace changes what you experience.

Hope changes what you see.
Compassion changes what you feel.
Love changes what you experience.

The past changes what you see.
The present changes what you feel.
The future changes what you experience.

The mind changes what you see.
The heart changes what you feel.
The soul changes what you experience. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

I have always had great respect for former president Mandela. The personal sacrifices he made in order to achieve what was right for the people of South Africa is something I carry with me every day. ~ Aaron Schock

As a graduate student Nathan Nunn, now a Harvard economist, began to compare different economies in modern Africa, and he found that the countries that lost more people to the slave trade were also the poorest countries today. How ~ Christine Kenneally

99.9% of the information you get about Africa is wrong ~ Fela Kuti

The clause too, reprobating the enslaving the inhabitants of Africa, was struck out in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who on the contrary still wished to continue it. Our northern brethren also I believe felt a little tender under those censures; for tho' their people have very few slaves themselves yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others. ~ Thomas Jefferson

I'm very proud that President [George W.] Bush took on AIDS relief. It was the largest single response by any country to a major international health crisis, and there are millions of people who are alive today in Africa and other developing countries because of that program. ~ Condoleezza Rice

Most Americans think of hunger as a problem affecting only places like India, Africa or South America. But it is a tragic reality that our country has millions of children who are suffering from lack of food. We must all work together to save our country from this problem. ~ Beverly Johnson

I didn't do very well when I was at school, so my dad gave me the opportunity to travel in Africa. I drove from London to Nairobi. It was incredible. ~ Sean Pertwee

But all that's hugely unlikely
with the exception of mosquito bites and sunburn. And yet even experienced travelers are still afraid.
"What everyone forgets
even me
is the people who actually live here. In places like Central America, I mean. Southeast Asia. India. Africa. Millions, even billions, of people, who live out their whole lives in these places
the places so many people like us fear. Think about it: they ride chicken buses to work every day. Their clothes are always damp. Their whole lives, they never escape the dust and the heat. But they deal with all these discomforts. They have to.
"So why can't travelers? If we've got the means to get here, we owe it to the country we're visiting not to treat it like an amusement park, sanitized for our comfort. It's insulting to the people who live here. People just trying to have the best lives they can, with the hands they've been dealt. ~ Kirsten Hubbard

I've had a great time in South America and South Africa. Indeed it now seems that on this pair of wild hot continents I've enjoyed the most fruitful year of my life. ~ John Muir

I am an international leader, the dean of the Arab rulers, the king of kings of Africa and the imam of Muslims, and my international status does not allow me to descend to a lower level. ~ Muammar Al-Gaddafi

But wasn't that progress too, that the elephants were killed off like the mastodon and giant rhino before them, like all other wildlife and wild places? 'We can't stop time,' MacAdam said. 'But you can change the way it goes,' Nehemiah insisted. ~ Mike Bond

Roads are not practical in Africa. ~ Mo Ibrahim

Shadows in shadows He watches through dreams Wings black as Africa Body strong as stone Done waiting The ravens call. ~ P.C. Cast

Zimbabwe, once the breadbasket of Africa, is now its dust bowl. ~ Ilana Mercer

I am no fashion diva - I grew up on the beaches in South Africa and am a nature girl that spends a lot of time outdoors. Fashion speaks to me through an occasion. ~ Tanit Phoenix

There are serious mistakes, among them the one saying that Jesus came as a messenger for other people other than the sons of Israel ... Christianity is not a faith for people in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas. Other people who are not sons of Israel have nothing to do with that religion ... It is a mistake that another religion exists alongside Islam. There is only one religion which is Islam after Mohammed ... All those believers who do not follow Islam are losers. ~ Muammar Al-Gaddafi

I believe that here in South Africa, with all our diversities of colour and race; we will show the world a new pattern for democracy. There is a challenge for us to set a new example for all. Let us not side step this task. ~ Albert Lutuli

What in Mandela was seen as an almost saintly ability to conciliate could, in a lesser man, be read as weak-kneed populism. ~ Mark Gevisser

Being "ordinary" means that we reject the idolatry of pursuing excellence for selfish reasons. We aren't digging wells in Africa to prove our worth or value. We aren't serving in the soup kitchen or engaging in spiritual disciplines because we long to be unique, radical, and different. When we do these things for selfish reasons, God becomes a tool for winning our lifetime achievement award. Our neighbors become instruments in the crafting of our sense of meaning, impact, and identity. What we do for God is really for ourselves. ~ Michael S. Horton

For most of a day we walked through alkali flats, the white crust like a frosted layer of salt that rose in a powder when your boots punched through. We wore the chalk on us everywhere - up to our knees, in the creases of our fingers clenching the rifle strap, down in the cavity between my breasts, and in my mouth, too. I couldn't keep it out and stopped trying. I couldn't keep anything out, I realized, and that was something I loved about Africa. The way it got at you from the outside in and never let up, and never let you go. ~ Paula McLain

Studies conducted in a city in Zimbabwe found that half of reported rape cases involve girls less than 15 years of age and that girls are most vulnerable to sexual abuse by male relatives, neighbors and school teachers. ~ Njovana Watts

There is a fear of immorality and disease in our midst. We don't like to be reminded of such things so close to home. We feel guilty that it happens while we are perfectly well and comfortable ourselves. Africa is too far away to be our fault. ~ Anne Perry

I have one thing in common with the emerging black nations of Africa: We both have voices, and we are discovering what we can do with them. ~ Miriam Makeba

Enough to summon Tommy down to assist. His repertoire of life skills, augmented by the time he spent in Africa, no doubt includes the function of generators. But I'd better wait at least until ~ J. Mark Bertrand

For this end Africa needs a new type of citizen, a dedicated, modest, honest and informed man. A man submerges self in service to the nation and mankind. A man who abhors greed and detests vanity. A new type of man whose humility is his strength and whose integrity is his greatness ~ Kwame Nkrumah

The great thing is, Internet allows you to create your own job, not just look for jobs other people are going to give you. And that, combined with the American spirit, I think, is going to help us come out of the recession faster than other countries. And I think it's going to help Africa come out of, you know, a century of slump. ~ Esther Dyson

I love Africa in general South Africa and West Africa, they are both great countries. ~ Paris Hilton

There was one of those sunsets beginning - the kind we've been having for months. Buildings and telephone poles were punched black against a watercolour sky into which fresh colour kept washing and spreading, higher and higher. We've never seen so high before; every day the colours go up and up to a hectic lilac, and from that, at last, comes the night. People carry their drinks outside not so much to look at the light, as to be in it. It's everywhere, surrounding faces and hair as it does the trees. It comes from a volcanic eruption on the other side of the world, from particles of dust that have risen to the upper atmosphere. Some people think it's from atomic tests; but it's said that, in Africa, we are safe from atomic fallout from the Northern Hemisphere because of the doldrums, an area where the elements lie becalmed and can carry no pollution. ~ Nadine Gordimer

But the soul of Africa, its integrity, the slow inexorable pulse of its life, is its own and of such singular rhythm that no outsider, unless steeped from childhood in its endless, even beat, can ever hope to experience it, except only as a bystander might experience a Masai war dance knowing nothing of its music nor the meaning of its steps. ~ Beryl Markham

Why do so many today want to wander off to South Africa or Kenya or India or Russia or Honduras or Costa Rica or Peru to help with justice issues but not spend the same effort in their own neighborhood or community or state? Why do young suburbanites, say in Chicago, want to go to Kentucky or Tennessee to help people but not want to spend that same time to go to the inner city in their own area to help with justice issues? I asked this question to a mature student in my office one day, and he thought he had a partial explanation: 'Because my generation is searching for experiences, and the more exotic and extreme the better. Going down the street to help at a food shelter is good and it is just and some of us are doing that, but it's not an experience. We want experiences. ~ Scot McKnight

Having spent all that time getting away from South Africa, running away from the army, I wanted very much to believe that America and England were actually as free as they were meant to be, not slipping rapidly into becoming police states like the one I'd just left. ~ Richard Stanley