Mbadugha African Quotes

You must resist the common urge toward the comforting narrative of divine law, toward fairy tales that imply some irrepressible justice. The enslaved were not bricks in your road, and their lives were not chapters in your redemptive history. They were people turned to fuel for the American machine. Enslavement was not destined to end, and it is wrong to claim our present circumstance - no matter how improved - as the redemption for the lives of people who never asked for the posthumous, untouchable glory of dying for their children. Our triumphs can never compensate for this. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

If you teach the Negro that he has accomplished as much good as any other race he will aspire to equality and justice without regard to race. Such an effort would upset the program of the oppressor in Africa and America. Play up before the Negro, then, his crimes and shortcomings. Let him learn to admire the Hebrew, the Greek, the Latin and the Teuton. Lead the Negro to detest the man of African blood
to hate himself. ~ Carter G. Woodson

The average Negro has largely lost faith in middle-class whites. In his hour of need he seeks not "talk" but dynamic action. He looks upon the middle-class idea of long-term educational and cultural changes with fear and mistrust. He is interested only in what can be achieved immediately by political pressure to get jobs, decent housing, and education for his children. He describes with disgust the efforts in his behalf by most middle-class Negro and white intellectuals as "pink tea methods--some times well-meanin' but gettin' us nowhere. ~ Bayard Rustin

The long rays of sun stretched across the street and touched the twisted mabati tin roofs of the shops, creating a soft light that dulled the dust and rust, making them look almost beautiful. ~ Stanley Gazemba (Bahati Books)

In Ugandan society a girl who had reached puberty was eligible for a family-arranged marriage. The groom would bring wealth to the bride's family in the form of cattle, goats, or land. My experience at the hands of Joseph Kony's murderers and rapists had made a mockery of this custom. I hated the idea, and my father understood. ~ Nick Hahn

Or have you simply been enjoying that North African river cruise?"
"You what?"
"In de-Nile? ~ J.L. Merrow

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

He was a romantic, a poet, a lover, a friend, and a freak. Someone to be turned on by and disgusted with in the same breath. He filled her with emotion. Whether it was the sensation of an orgasm or the comfort of someone who listen to her, this experience indulged all her pleasurable senses with little to no conflict. It was heaven, it was ecstasy, but it wasn't real. ~ Norian F. Love

The Legislature, which was elected under the Constitution framed and supported by colored men, declared that a man having more than an eighth of African blood in his veins was ineligible to office or a seat in the Legislature of the State of Georgia. ~ Hiram Rhodes Revels

Pier 5 in Brooklyn was within a short walking distance from the subway station and in the distance the masts and funnel of my new ship could be seen. The S/S African Sun was a C-4 cargo ship built in 1942, for the war effort. Not even 15 years old, the ship looked as good as new. Farrell Lines took good care of their ships and it showed. There was always a lot of activity prior to departure and this time was no exception. We were expected to depart prior to dusk and there were things to do.
I got into my working uniform and leaving my sea bag on my bunk headed for the bridge. When I passed the open door of the Captain's room he summoned me in. "Welcome aboard Mr. Mate. I've heard good things about you!" We talked briefly about his expectations. Introducing himself as Captain Brian, he seemed friendly enough and I felt that I got off to a good start.
As the ship's Third Officer, most frequently known as the Third Mate, my first order of business was to place my license into the frame alongside those of the other deck officers. I must admit that doing so gave me a certain feeling of pride and belonging. With only an hour to go before our scheduled departure I called the engine room and gave them permission to jack over the engine; a term used to engage the engine, so as to slowly turn the screw or propeller. ~ Hank Bracker

One had said, 'You say you come from Ghaanna? Then we have a lot in common!' Sissie didn't know what to do with the statement, uncertain of whether it was a threat or a promise.
'We had chiefs like you,' the Scot went on, 'who fought one another and all, while the Invader marched in.' Sissie thanked her, but also felt strongly that their kinship had better end right there. ~ Ama Ata Aidoo

White voters who feel they are losing a historical hold on power are reacting to something real. For the bulk of American history, you couldn't win the presidency without winning a majority - usually an overwhelming majority - of white vote. Though this changed before Obama - Bill Clinton won slightly less of the white vote than his Republican challengers - the election of an African American president leading a young, multiracial coalition made the transition stark and threatening. ~ Ezra Klein

I don't feel that I was often compartmentalized as an African-American actor, yet I am fully aware of the plight that actors, directors and producers of color face in our industry. I choose to focus on being proactive in creating opportunities for myself and others while acknowledging that we are not playing on a level playing field. ~ Kim Fields

Remember this one thing baby girl, women don't juggle…we diversify! ~ Iesha S. Walker

Whose little boy are you? ~ James Baldwin

Color categories are on steroids in Latin America. I find that fascinating. It's very difficult for Americans, particularly African-Americans to understand or sympathize with. ~ Henry Louis Gates

Within a lot of African-American households, I think, there's an idea that black men don't want to take an active participation in the lives of their children. That if they do, there has to be some sort of ulterior motive. ~ Gabrielle Union

No matter how hot your anger may be, it cannot cook. ~ Lesotho

People who don't vote have no line of credit with people who are elected and thus pose no threat to those who act against our interests. ~ Marian Wright Edelman

People that think are many,
people that reason are few.
People that theorize are many,
people that prove are few.
People that speculate are many,
people that know are few.
People that assume are many,
people that verify are few.

People that hear are many,
people that listen are few.
People that preach are many,
people that practice are few.
People that see are many,
people that observe are few.
People that recall are many,
people that comprehend are few.

People that question are many,
people that answer are few.
People that entertain are many,
people that educate are few.
People that misguide are many,
people that enlighten are few.
People that lecture are many,
people that demonstrate are few.

People that start are many,
people that finish are few.
People that quit are many,
people that persevere are few.
People that fall are many,
people that rise are few.
People that compete are many,
people that win are few.

People that criticize are many,
people that inspire are few.
People that blame are many,
people that pardon are few.
People that condemn are many,
people that console are few.
People that undermine are many,
people that strengthen are few.

People that take are many,
people that give are few.
People that teach are many,
people t ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

Gosnell is African American, and there is a persistent myth that serial killers are all white men. But that's not true. There are serial killers from all ethnic groups: White, African American, Hispanic, and Asian. ~ Ann McElhinney

There is, in fact, no need to drag politics into literary theory: as with South African sport, it has been there from the beginning. I mean by the political no more than the way we organize our social life together, and the power-relations which this involves; and what I have tried to show throughout this book is that the history of modern literary theory is part of the political and ideological history of our epoch. From Percy Bysshe Shelley to Norman N. Holland, literary theory has been indissociably bound up with political beliefs and ideological values. Indeed literary theory is less an object of intellectual enquiry in its own right than a particular perspective in which to view the history of our times. Nor should this be in the least cause for surprise. For any body of theory concerned with human meaning, value, language, feeling and experience will inevitably engage with broader, deeper beliefs about the nature of human individuals and societies, problems of power and sexuality, interpretations of past history, versions of the present and hopes for the future. It is not a matter of regretting that this is so - of blaming literary theory for being caught up with such questions, as opposed to some 'pure' literary theory which might be absolved from them. Such 'pure' literary theory is an academic myth: some of the theories we have examined in this book are nowhere more clearly ideological than in their attempts to ignore history and politics altogether. Literary theor ~ Terry Eagleton

My solutions are to include Africa in the global economy, and not African charity, AIDS research, but African infrastructure development. And I think that Africa can import and needs everything the whole world can manufacture. And they have got enough money to pay for it. It's just that the money is in the ground. ~ Andrew Young

President Obama and the so call "Department of Justice" has ripped the fabric of America's People and suborning hate among African Americans against Law Enforcement and Whites. These actions have made President Obama, Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former Attorney General Eric Holder the biggest racists of all times. ~ David Dweck

'I wish for a better life. I wish for food for my children. I wish that sexual abuse and exploitation in schools would stop.' This is the dream of the African girl. ~ Leymah Gbowee

Alexa and the other guests, and perhaps even Georgina, all understood the fleeing from war, from the kind of poverty that crushed human souls, but they would not understand the need to escape from the oppressive lethargy of choicelessness. They would not understand why people like him who were raised well fed and watered but mired in dissatisfaction, conditioned from birth to look towards somewhere else, eternally convinced that real lives happened in that somewhere else, were now resolved to do dangerous things, illegal things, so as to leave, none of them starving, or raped, or from burned villages, but merely hungry for for choice and certainty. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

There are features that African Americans have that are similar! There are features that white people have that are similar! Features that Hispanic people have that are similar! ~ Don Lemon

In general, Iranians believe that all Palestinians have the right to return home and that there is no chosen people on this earth, whether Jewish, Muslim, Christian. Iran had the same policy towards apartheid South Africa and at the time when it was supporting and funding the ANC [African National Congress] among other groups in South Africa, these groups were also considered to be terrorist organizations by many western governments. ~ Mohammad Marandi

South African history did not start in 1652. ~ Nick Wood

When a dish works, it works for everyone, whether you're Asian, European, African, American or anybody else. ~ Joel Robuchon

When World War II erupted, colonialism was at its apogee. The courde of the war, however, its symbolic undertones, would sow the seeds of the system's defeat and demise. [ ... ] The central subject, the essence, the core relations between Europeans and Africans during the colonial era, was the difference of race, of skin color. Everything-each eaxchange, connection, conflict-was translated into the language of black and white. [ ... ] Into the African was inculcated the notion that the white man was untouchable, unconquerable, that whites constitute a homogenous, cohesive force. [ ... ] Then, suddenly, Africans recruited into the British and French armies in Europe observed that the white men were fighting one another, shooting one another, destroying one another's cities. It was revelation, a surprise, a shock. ~ Ryszard Kapuscinski

I'm very interested in heritage restoration, and I'm working with a group of people to create a number of academies and performance spaces to encourage native arts and crafts and to explore African history. ~ Hugh Masekela

I try to do the right thing at the ... ~ Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

I'm Kan, the Louis Vouitton don / Bought my mom purse, now she Louis Vuitton mom / I didn't play the hand I was dealt I changed my cards / I prayed to the skies and I changed my stars / I went to the malls and I balled too hard / Oh My God is that a Black card / I turned around and replied why yes, but I prefer the term African American Express ~ Kanye West

The irony is too rich not to point out. When arranging the different human races in tiers, from just below the angels to just above the brutes, smug racialist scientists of the 1800s always equated black skin with 'subhuman' beasts like Neanderthals. But facts is facts: pure Nordic Europeans carry far more Neanderthal DNA than any modern African. ~ Sam Kean

I'll be the first US president to not only visit Kenya and Ethiopia, but also to address the continent as a whole, building off the African summit that we did here which was historic and has, I think, deepened the kinds of already strong relationships that we have across the continent. ~ Barack Obama

I've long suspected that one of the reasons why human beings haven't yet figured out how to carry on a conversation with bottlenosed porpoises, African gray parrots, et al. in their own language is quite simply that we're terrified of what they might say to us - not least because it's entirely possible that they'd be right. ~ John Michael Greer

After daybreak is when I will already have died. At that moment I will only know of beautiful things: the certainties, the desires. When the sun bathes me, I will be something else: without mirrors, without sadness. I will have passed away, but will have been reborn. I will whistle mellifluous melodies. Discredited but, in the end, light. ~ Ondjaki

I am a descendent of a whole bunch of Black folk who couldn't be broken. ~ Darnell Lamont Walker

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

My intention is not to repudiate an African American identity but perhaps to resist how labels take hold, or to make it as slow a process as possible. That's more my sense of it. ~ Mark McMorris

Develop enough courage so that you can stand up for yourself and then stand up for somebody else. ~ Maya Angelou

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

To handicap a student by teaching him that his black face is a curse and that his struggle to change his condition is hopeless is the worst sort of lynching. It kills one's aspirations and dooms him to vagabondage and crime. ~ Carter G. Woodson

An inch of gold can't buy an inch of time ~ Nicole Mones

You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot I said that this could have been my son. Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago. And when you think about why, in the African American community at least, there's a lot of pain around what happened here, I think it's important to recognize that the African American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that doesn't go away. ~ Barack Obama

The mind is the key,
the heart is the door,
the soul is the corridor,
the divine is the destination.

The past is the key,
the present is the door,
the future is the corridor,
the hereafter is the destination.

The world is the key,
the sky is the door,
the cosmos is the corridor,
the universe is the destination. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

If you see a group of people struggling over generations and you attribute those struggles to bad character, then you do not truly believe we are all created equally. ~ Jonathan R. Miller

I knew that I lived in a country in which the aspirations of black people were limited, marked-off. Yet I felt that I had to go somewhere and do something to redeem my being alive. ~ Richard Wright