Olinka Africa Quotes

Before I went to jail, I was active in politics as a member of South Africa's leading organization - and I was generally busy from 7 A.M. until midnight. I never had time to sit and think. ~ Nelson Mandela

We are a city that has had Islam for one thousand years. We had the greatest teachers and universities. And now these Bedouins, these illiterates, these ignoramuses, tell us how to wear our pants, and how to say our prayers, and how our wives should dress, as if they were the ones who invented the way? ~ Joshua Hammer

Truth is the eldest daughter of knowledge.
Intelligence is the eldest daughter of wisdom.
Perception is the eldest daughter of understanding.
Exposure is the eldest daughter of awareness.
Calmness is the eldest daughter of peace.
Hope is the eldest daughter of faith.
Charity is the eldest daughter of virtue.
Humility is the eldest daughter of honor.
Mercy is the eldest daughter of grace.
Chastity is the eldest daughter of piety.
Modesty is the eldest daughter of meekness.
Desire is the eldest daughter of action.
Prudence is the eldest daughter of caution.
Trust is the eldest daughter of Integrity.
Friendship is the eldest daughter of kindness.
Tolerance is the eldest daughter of equality.
Freedom is the eldest daughter of democracy.
Praise is the eldest daughter of appreciation.
Patience is the eldest daughter of diligence.
Maturity is the eldest daughter of growth.
Harmony is the eldest daughter of order.
Sound is the eldest daughter of movement.
Heat is the eldest daughter of motion.
Acceleration is the eldest daughter of force.
Experience is the eldest daughter of reality.
Chance is the eldest daughter of destiny.
Time is the eldest daughter of eternity. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

There's a saying in Africa: 'To find out you are pregnant is to have one foot in the grave.' ~ Liya Kebede

I straddle two worlds. One foot in America. One foot in Africa. My heart is split. It's an awkward place to be, as it stretches the legs upon which I stand. I would prefer to be in one place instead of straddled awkwardly across an ocean. Contrary to American doctrine, however, I think we are supposed to be a little bit uncomfortable as we live within the tensions of this complicated world. ~ Jena Lee

It deals with so many different aspects of living in South Africa the racial issues of South Africans and Asians with poverty with the reality of children orphaned by AIDS the transition from village life to city life. ~ Laura Thielen

Through my years of working on war and peace in Africa, I have learned that there are solutions to some of the greatest human rights challenges, and we all can be a part of those solutions. ~ John Prendergast

We will provide aviation, construction, and logistics services first throughout Africa and then throughout the rest of the world. ~ Erik Prince

Contemplating while barefoot on the grounds my father and grandfather walked, I saw my life clearly. With African sun nibbling on my dark skin and gentle winds soothing my foreboding, my past life and current responsibilities overwhelmed me occasionally. Abundant tears flowed freely. Dripping on my face and clothes. Travelling through the ancient roads created by my forefathers, grasslands, trees and anthills kept me company. A lonely journey. I knew that nothing remains the same, but ones past never changes. Even in the loneliness of my past, I accepted that you cannot effectively go forward without knowing how and where you started your journey. Even in that state of near dejection I was aware that my sojourn in foreign lands is not forever, but my lording of this beautiful land, my own Africa, where my spent body will finally rest someday, is for eternity. Nothing remains the same, but nothing ever changes. It depends on how you look at your life. ~ Fidelis O. Mkparu

Neither Doyle nor Sullivan had ever been to visit him at Regina Cleri, and Tip had only come one time and then left after five minutes. To Father Sullivan it was as if this part of his family, these people whom he loved, had all packed up and gone to Africa. ~ Ann Patchett

Is it an endearing quirk among European explorers to imagine that every geographical feature they clap eyes on for the first time is in need of a new name, or is if just a plain silly one? As far as I understand, humans have been knocking around this part of Africa for - give or take a birthday candle- three million years. The existence of a large wet patch smack in the middle of them had not gone unnoticed. How large? Bigger than Lake Michigan, bigger than Tasmania, bigger than Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont and Rhode Island all rolled into one. It is so big that people on one side gave it one name, people on the other side gave it another, and people in between gave it several more. But that didn't matter to Dr Livingstone. Along he came and he didn't ask the locals what they called this large lake at the top end of the Nile. He gave it yet another name, in honour of the elder of a tribe of white people on a small island five thousand miles away. ~ Nicholas Drayson

You don't grow up naive in Africa. ~ Claire Denis

Because of its exceptional capacity for self-criticism, the West took the initiative in abolishing slavery; the calls for abolition did not resonate even in black Africa, where rival African tribes took black prisoners to be sold as slaves in the West. ~ Ibn Warraq

Growing up in this post-apartheid era, the first generation of teens in South Africa living in this new democracy, I often found myself feeling different. I was often the only person of color in an otherwise all-white school. And within the Indian community, because of my training with an English acting teacher, my accent was very different. ~ Adhir Kalyan

We will always be black, you and I, even if it means different things in different places. France is built on its own dream, on its collection of bodies, and recall that your very name is drawn from a man who opposed France and its national project of theft by colonization. It is true that our color was not our distinguishing feature there, so much as the Americanness represented in our poor handle on French. And it is true that there is something particular about how the Americans who think they are white regard us - something sexual and obscene. We were not enslaved in France. We are not their particular "problem," nor their national guilt. We are not their niggers. If there is any comfort in this, it is not the kind that I would encourage you to indulge. Remember your name. Remember that you and I are brothers, are the children of trans-Atlantic rape. Remember the broader consciousness that comes with that. Remember that this consciousness can never ultimately be racial; it must be cosmic. Remember the Roma you saw begging with their children in the street, and the venom with which they were addressed. Remember the Algerian cab driver, speaking openly of his hatred of Paris, then looking at your mother and me and insisting that we were all united under Africa. Remember the rumbling we all felt under the beauty of Paris, as though the city had been built in abeyance of Pompeii. Remember the feeling that the great public gardens, the long lunches, might all be undone by a ph ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

I read all of Rider Haggard's books. For me he had the romance of Africa with a little bit of mysticism. I'm delighted to be looked on as his heir and be categorised as an adventure novelist because that's exactly what I am. ~ Wilbur Smith

Basketball Without Borders is a leadership camp that takes basketball to different places around the world, to Africa, Europe, America and Asia. It's a camp that brings players from different parts of the continent to one city that's been assigned as the host city. We've been going to a different city every year. ~ Dikembe Mutombo

The challenge is clear: we have to conserve and improve the soil we have, and we need to turn dirt into soil wherever people need to grow food. That's true in America's breadbasket, it's true in the tropics, and it's true in the dry, hardscrabble, weathered soils that cover much of sub- Saharan Africa. ~ Howard G. Buffett

Bhutan does seem a bit unreal at times. Hardly anybody in the U.S. knows where it is. I have friends who still think the entire country is a figment of my imagination. When I was getting ready to move there, and I told people I was going to work in Bhutan, they'd inevitably ask, "Where's Butane?"
It is near Africa," I'd answer, to throw them off the trail. "It's where all the disposable lighters come from."
They'd nod in understanding. ~ Linda Leaming

We know that when people are safe in their homes, they are free to pursue their dream for a brighter economic future for themselves and their families. ~ George Pataki

As they say: A baking man will grasp at a hangman. Whoever gets the job will be dragged into the heat, forced to wear a massive pair of iron shoes, and frogmarched across the minefield at gunpoint. ~ Taona Dumisani Chiveneko

Africa was perceived - it still is to some extent - as a place which is very difficult to do business in. I don't share that view. ~ Mo Ibrahim

Sport has the power to inspire and unite people. In Africa, soccer enjoys great popularity and has a particular place in the hearts of people. ~ Nelson Mandela

Look to Africa, when a black king shall be crowned for the day of deliverance is at hand! ~ Marcus Garvey

There is this other thought that he has overcome the world by the gift of the Holy Spirit. That gift was practically the world's conquest. Jesus has set up a rival kingdom now: a kingdom of love and righteousness; already the world feels its power by the Spirit. I do not believe that there is a dark place in the centre of Africa which is not to some extent improved by the influence of Christianity; even the wilderness rejoices and is glad for him. No barbarous power dares to do what it once did, or if it does there is such a clamour raised against its cruelty that very soon it has to say peccavi, [I have sinned] and confess its faults. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Everyone is related to Africa; everyone comes from Africa. We are all distant relatives. ~ Damian Marley

The racial conversation in the States is so multifaceted and multilayered. Obviously it's not always a positive conversation, but it's just so much more detailed than it was when I was growing up in South Africa. ~ St. Lucia

When abandoned babies were left out on the streets and back alleys, the Christians in North Africa organized baby runs and brought these babies to nursing mothers. The pagans were overwhelmed with the caring attitude of the Christians. Just as Peter predicted, unbelievers were led to faith in Christ and "glorified God" in the day of visitation. The excellencies of Christ are best revealed through the lives of those who are compassionate because they themselves are profoundly aware of their own shortcomings. The world can out entertain us; outnumber us; out finance us, but let it never be said that they can out-love us, for "God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us" (Romans 5:5). ~ Erwin W. Lutzer

MOUNT PLAASMOORDE
If ever you visit South Africa
And do
Leave the brilliant beaches of Cape Town for a moment
Climb Mount Plaasmoorde Witkruis monument
And you'll see the victims of apartheid
White crosses marking a thousand white victims
Planted in the earth of a million black victims
They lie dissolved in the humus of the soils
They were too many to have their own marked graves
Too many to build black crosses for
And just too hard to forget about
Because they make the soil under your feet black ~ Dauglas Dauglas

The histories of our two peoples, Palestinian and South African, correspond in such painful and poignant ways, that I intensely feel myself being at home amongst compatriots ~ Nelson Mandela

The problem with computers is that there is not enough Africa in them. ~ Brian Eno

At the outset, I want to say that the suggestion that the struggle in South Africa is under the influence of foreigners or communists is wholly incorrect. I have done whatever I did because of my experience in South Africa and my own proudly felt African background, and not because of what any outsider might have said. ~ Nelson Mandela

...it was just a version of Rimbaud in Harar: the exile, a selfish beast with modest fantasies of power, secretly enjoying a life of beer drinking and scribbling and occasional mythomania in a nice climate where there were no interruptions, such as unwelcome letters or faxes or cell phones. It was an eccentric ideal, life lived off the map.¨ ~ Paul Theroux

I like to go to Africa purely with something to do. I'm not very comfortable getting into an armor-plated Land Rover and going to see things, with my hand gel, you know, it's not me at all. So I like to hang out and you know, really get to know people and try and do something that resonates with them. ~ Damon Albarn

The traditional face of Africa includes an attitude towards man which can only be described as being socialist ~ Kwame Nkrumah