Thomas Sankara Quotes

My children have to know where they come from and the way of life in Africa.

I realized that you cannot think European and want to write or create something African. You have to think African in everything.

I believe that a psychological, cultural, and philosophical migration back to Africa will solve our problem.

An awareness of our past is essential to the establishment of our personality and our identity as Africans.

I've got to where am in life not because of something I brought to the world but through something I found - the wealth of African culture.

It would be good for us Africans to accept ourselves as we are and recapture some of the positive aspects of our culture.

They say if you drink Zambezi water with your mother's milk, you are always a slave of Africa, and I am.

My message was 'Think African. Make schools read African history.'

I think hip hop allows us to talk about everything, and Africa is what I choose to talk about now. If people are not talking about Africa, that's them, that's cool, there's nothing wrong with that. But this is who I am, this is what I have to say, this is what I have to offer.

We know nothing about Africa, although our roots are there in terms of our forbearers. But I mean as far as the average Negro today, he knows nothing about Africa. And I think he's got to face the fact that he is an American, his culture is basically American, and one becomes adjusted to this when he realizes what, what he is.

My biggest obsession is to show Africans and the world who the people of Africa really are.

My father had retained an emotional affection for the ceremonial of his parental home, without allowing it to influence his intellectual freedom.

When I was younger, I would see shea butter being sold on the street, and I was interested how people were still coating themselves in the theater of Africanism. You see that in dashikis and hairstyles and music.

I am an African and I am very proud of that.

To live your life well, and have respect for what came before or after - there's a strong respect for that in African culture.

My roots are African. The birds I remember, the fruits I ate, the trees I climbed, they're African.

I'm not a prophet; I can only use historical reality to come to a view of the future, and my view is that Africa will return to being African and not European. The advent of colonialism was foreign to the country itself, but it will return to what it was before the Europeans arrived.

I read a lot of biographies and books with an African background.

Africa is my continent. It is where I opened my eyes.

Men will sooner surrender their rights than their customs.

I changed my name when we became aware of the African revolution and the whole question of our African roots.

My name, Solange, means 'Angel of the sun,' and I'm completely enamored of my African history. The culture is so expressive.

Wakanda, in short, is the Africa of black dreams.

Whether as living humans or as mythological figures, ancestors have always played an important role in the African popular and literary imagination. Sometimes, as in Amos Tutuola's famous short novels, they directly influence events. More often, as in the works of Chinua Achebe, both living and dead ancestors are sages offering valuable advice.

A lot of groups spend their whole cultural and aesthetic identity trying to move away from Africa, which I think is a mistake. One of the reasons I love Cuba and cultures like that is because they're not trying to move away from their African roots, they're trying to embrace them. That's part of the culture.