Thomas Sankara Quotes

It was so much more comfortable to be able to divide people into heroes and villains and expect them to play their allotted part.

Writers and journalists tend to be simplistic about politics when, like all other areas of life, it's more complicated.

Heroism is endurance for one moment more.

People are so complex and multidimensional that raising someone to 'hero' status is too great a simplification.

No one is any one thing.

A man with a so-called character is often a simple piece of mechanism; he has often only one point of view for the extremely complicated relationships of life.

Sometimes I watch the broad comedies coming out of Hollywood and I think, 'You know, sex is a big part of people's lives, but is that really the only thing men are ever concerned about?' People are more complicated than they appear in film or television.

Our society has lost its taste for complexity and nuance…. We want simple answers …. We have almost disabled our politicians from speaking.

The world cannot live at the level of its great men.

No one knows how greatness comes to a man. It may lie in his blackness, sleeping, or it may lance into him like those driven fiery particles from outer space. These things, however, are known about greatness: need gives it life and puts it in action; it never comes without pain; it leaves a man changed, chastened, and exalted at the same time--he can never return to simplicity...

This is always the problem with building heroes. To keep them pure, we must build them stupid. The world is built on compromise and uncertainty, and such a place is too complex for heroes to flourish.

The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may not be going to prove one's self a fool; the truest heroism is, to resist the doubt; and the profoundest wisdom, to know when it ought to be resisted, and when to be obeyed.

Nurture your mind with great thoughts. To believe in the heroic makes heroes.

This need of a symbol, something to look up to, to trust, to rely on, is a very deep need in human nature. On it in the past has been built every theory of government. Kings grew out of it; dictators grow out of it today; and the real test of Democracy is whether we can feel this way about our leaders and yet keep enough reliance in ourselves to preserve the individual responsibility that must exist in every citizen if democracies are to endure.

People tend to simplify things.

Humans are complex, and I think in entertainment in general, it's very easy to put people in boxes.

Being so rational, we have created a very simple version of ourselves.

Men are but men, and the greatest men are they who soonest learn the simpler things.

People are naive about such things, and they would rather write them off as evil than attempt to understand them. An unfortunate truth, but a truth nonetheless.

For easy things, that may be got at will, Most sorts of men do set but little store.

Heaven is weary of the luxury of China. I shall remain in the wilderness of the north. I shall return to simplicity and moderations once again. As for the clothes I wear and the food I eat, I shall have the same as cowherds and grooms and I shall treat my soldiers as brothers. In a hundred battles I have been at the forefront and within seven years I have performed a great work, for in six directions of space all things are subject to one ruler.

The presidency has become a series of visuals I don't know how a woman fits into.

The nature of the leadership spirit is the inherent desire of all mankind to control and regulate both environment and circumstance.

Nature's way is simple and easy, but men prefer the intricate and artificial.

Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple, and the simple thing is the right thing.