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Africa Quotes

Browse 547 quotes about Africa.

Africa Quotes

“But are there some things that happen in life to make other things, which once seemed unforgivable, forgivable? Does my surrogate father's grief and suffering make forgiveable what he did to Mrs. Thornton? Has what happened to my Thandi - dammit - has what happened to my Thandi not made my Uncle Zacchaeus's vices forgivable? Because I know how my Thandi's death must have hurt him so! How he must have wept! How it drove him to near madness! Did he not, in the mid-'80s, right after her death, begin to scribble anti-establishment tracts that cut the government to the quick? Incisive, precise pieces that were so unlike his former, literary, wispy self... And can Abednego ever forgive Black Jesus? As Dumo used to say, one can't just exist passively in the twenty-first century. One has to be, actively, an ethical citizen of our global village, seeing in others the mirror of what he sees in himself - humanity - and in himself what he presupposes to be in others - inhumanity. This was one of his sweetest sermons! The loftiest of his speeches, designed to elevate! And yet he, himself, despite admitting that our current oppressors, too, had been, also, once upon a time, victims of oppression under the fascist state of Rhodesia, from which they had learned well and whose lessons they were now applying full force in the jingoistic state of Zimbabwe, in spite of being able to realize all of this, he could not bring himself to recognize Black Jesus's humanity. 'There's nothing human about that man!' he exclaimed, tears streaming down his face. And I don't blame him! I don't blame him for being unable to transcend this, and yet whenever I look in the mirror and see this face of mine which is as black as a velvet night, with my kissable lips and my finely sloping cheekbones, I can't help but think what this, then, makes me.”

PhilosophyHistoryGenocideAfricaZimbabweIsraeli Palestinian ConflictAfrican HistoryPalestine Israel
Book:House of Stone
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“The doctor in Murare is old - old for anybody. He is especially old for a doctor and especially old for an African. But he doesn´t have the luxury of retirement to look forward to. There aren´t enough doctors in Africa. Those who choose to become doctors here don´t do it for the money or because thy want to do good. They do it because they have to heal, the way most people need to breath or eat or love. They can´t stop. As long as they are alive, they will never not be a doctor. They can be old, or alcoholic or burnt-out, but they will always be a doctor.”

CallingHealAfricaDoctorZimbabweRhodesia
Author:Alexandra Fuller
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“The schools wear the blank faces of war buildings, their windows blown blind by rocks or guns or mortars. Their plaster is an acne of bullet marks. The huts and small houses crouch open and vulnerable; their doors are flimsy pieces of plyboard or sacks hanging and lank. Children and chickens and dogs scratch in the red, raw soil and stare at us as we drive through their open, eroding lives.”

ChildrenWarAfricaZimbabweDescriptiveRhodesia
Book:Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood
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“When an entire segment of the world is burned and reduced to a lawless battleground for thugs and mercenaries, a land where government does not exist, where the slate of history is being wiped out and hope has drowned in gallons of innocent blood, the only respite comes in the form of the open seas and what lies beyond the horizon. So ships are boarded and pain is tolerated just a little while longer.”

WarPoliticsMiddle EastAfricaRefugeeUnited NationsPolitical PhilosophyEuropean UnionArab SpringMigrant
Author:Aysha Taryam
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“The lifetime prevalence of dissociative disorders among women in a general urban Turkish community was 18.3%, with 1.1% having DID (ar, Akyüz, & Doan, 2007). In a study of an Ethiopian rural community, the prevalence of dissociative rural community, the prevalence of dissociative disorders was 6.3%, and these disorders were as prevalent as mood disorders (6.2%), somatoform disorders (5.9%), and anxiety disorders (5.7%) (Awas, Kebede, & Alem, 1999). A similar prevalence of ICD-10 dissociative disorders (7.3%) was reported for a sample of psychiatric patients from Saudi Arabia (AbuMadini & Rahim, 2002).”

Mental HealthAfricaPsychiatryDissociative Identity DisorderSaudi ArabiaMultiple Personality DisorderEthiopiaSplit PersonalityDissociative DisordersDsm
Book:Oxford Textbook of Psychopathology
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“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?”

ReligionPrayerEducationIslamAfricaLiteracyMaliTimbuktu
Book:The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu and Their Race to Save the World’s Most Precious Manuscripts
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“They glided out of the heat-haze on their camels like specters. There were twenty of them, and they were Tuareg. Their faces were hidden by black veils that left only slits for the eyes, and they wore purple robes that fluttered in the desert wind. They carried swords, muskets and seven-foot iron spears, and wore stilettos in sheaths on their left forearms. They were an impressive, sinister sight.”

CultureExplorationAfricaSaharaNomadsTimbuktuSahelCulture ClashTuareg
Book:Death in the Sahara: The Lords of the Desert and the Timbuktu Railway Expedition Massacre
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“In families one can’t choose one’s siblings. Within regions one doesn’t choose one’s neighbors. And if you are one of the world’s leading producers of a critical industrial resource like copper, in the end you can’t really choose your customers. China and Zambia will just have to get along.”

EconomicsChinaAfricaNatural ResourcesZambia
Book:China's Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa
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“The sun rose this morning failing to dissipate the haze barely hanging above the palm fronds. A windy morning, and that inner feeling of something different about to start. A sub-Saharan harmattan; a blow of kiss with a tender chill. A chill not suited for a fireplace, but soothed by a soft sweater draped across my aging shoulders. When I close my eyes, I felt what I assumed to be teardrops on my feet. The manifestation of my ambivalence about the many years of my sojourn in foreign lands. I escaped from a state of despair as the harmattan wind blows, whistling and whispering my name across pine trees. I am home in Africa”

WritersAfricaNigeriaAfrican WritersNigerian WritersSojournHarmattan
Author:Fidelis O Mkparu. (2018)
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“We can appreciate a pan-African congress in Africa, or a pan-African congress in America, where 15,000,000 Negroes live, or a pan-African congress in the West Indies, where 20,000,000 Negroes live, but we cannot see the reasonableness of a pan-African congress in Europe; and for that reason and for others, we consider that it is only a subterfuge.”

DeceitAfricaCunningSubterfugePan AfricanismMarcus GarveyPan African
Book:Emancipated From Mental Slavery
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“From the beginning, Europe assumed the power to make decisions within the international trading system. An excellent illustration of that is the fact that the so-called international law which governed the conduct of nations on the high seas was nothing else but European law. Africans did not participate in its making, and in many instances, African people were simply the victims, for the law recognized them only as transportable merchandise. If the African slave was thrown overboard at sea, the only legal problem that arose was whether or not the slave ship could claim compensation from the insurers! Above all, European decision-making power was exercised in selecting what Africa should export – in accordance with European needs.”

HistoryPowerEuropeAfricaInternational Law
Book:How Europe Underdeveloped Africa
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“DREAMS IN THEIR EYES "Julian’s work gives us a chance to look deeply and to sympathize with captive animals. His work should both captivate and haunt us. As stewards of this planet, we have an obligation to accept Julian’s invitation to have this experience. By so doing, we can hear these magnificent animals and give voice in our language to creatures that cannot speak it. We can all become wildlife advocates.”

PreservesAfricaZoosSafariWild AnimalsEndangeredSanctuariesTippi Hedren
Author:Benjamin Monarch, Wildlife Attorney
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“...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.¨”

AfricaTravelogueMythomania
Book:Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town
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“The problem with the naira (and most African currencies) is fundamental. Our currency(ies) rests on faulty economic substructure that no amount of reactionary policy can fix. The Nigerian economy is hollow and only dogged commitment to true economic principles of value creation and local production supported by export and diversification will lead us to the pathway of economic transformation.”

PoliticsLeadershipEconomyPolicyDevelopmentAfricaGovernanceNigeriaNaira
Author:Peter-Cole C. Onele
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