A house should not be built so close to another that a chicken from one can lay an egg in the neighbor's yard, nor so far away that a child cannot shout to the yard of his neighbor.

Small nations are like indecently dressed women. They tempt the evil-minded.

African nationalism is meaningless, dangerous, anachronistic, if it is not, at the same time, pan-Africanism.

Independence cannot be real if a nation depends upon gifts.

You cannot develop people. You must allow people to develop themselves.

There is no time to waste. We must either unite now or perish.

Having come into contact with a civilization which has over-emphasized the freedom of the individual, we are in fact faced with one of the big problems of Africa in the modern world. Our problem is just this: how to get the benefits of European society - benefits that have been brought about by an organization based upon the individual - and yet retain African's own structure of society in which the individual is a member of a kind of fellowship.