Quotes About Africa

Maybe I'm overly pessimistic, but most of Africa is a continent without much hope for its people... What [Africa] needs, the West cannot give. ...what Africans need is personal liberty...[and] guarantees of private property rights and rule of law.

The titanic effort that has brought liberation to South Africa, and ensured the total liberation of Africa, constitutes an act of redemption for the black people of the world.

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. That is why it is so important that the FIFA World Cup will, for the first time ever, be hosted on the African continent in 2010. We feel privileged and humbled that South Africa has been given this singular honour of being the African host country.

Race is not the only differential in South Africa, in the new South Africa, where all schools are open, mother-tongue education is a very big issue. One of the main reasons why the dropout figure of black students, and the lower pass rate of black students in the present education system, and it was like that before, was that we didn't have mother-tongue education.

I was doing the Black Issue in 2006 and then went to Africa for Uomo Vogue. I've worked with Gucci and Fendi, committed to create jobs. Fifty percent of those ads went to non-government organizations in Africa. [Nelson] Mandela was on the cover, it helped create attention.

South Africa used to seem so far away. Then it came home to me. It began to signify the meaning of white hatred here. That was what the sheets and the suits and the ties covered up, not very well. That was what the cowardly guys calling me names from their speeding truck wanted to happen to me, to all of me: to my people. That was what would happen to me if I walked around the corner into the wrong neighborhood. That was Birmingham. That was Brooklyn. That was Reagan. That was the end of reason. South Africa was how I came to understand that I am not against war; I am against losing the war.

I helped found Artists for New South Africa, but it used to be called Artists for Free South Africa. Alfre Woodard and a bunch of us started this.

In the industrial nations, there's a sense that Africa would go under without development aid. But believe me, Africa existed before you Europeans came along. And we didn't do all that poorly either.

It is considered in England and the United States that the Government of South Africa is altogether too harsh with its native peoples. It is sadly humorous to notice that the native in South Africa, however, holds an exactly reverse opinion and the fault he finds with the South African Government is that it is far too lenient in its administration of laws throughout the native populace.

Sinn Fein has productively taken the example of South Africa and, as we develop the peace process, we continue to use examples from South Africa.

I was treated much better in Africa than I was treated in America. And you see, often I get letters like this: "Go back to Africa."

My courage comes from my faith. I have come to one conclusion: All that I am, all that I aspire to be, all that I was before, is by the grace of God. There are so many women in Africa, and outside Africa, who are more intelligent than I am.

I think that black Africa is extremely terrifying. Black Africa can become a maelstrom of warring tribes without the outside world needing to feel the need to do anything about it.

The same rebellion, the same impatience, the same anger that exists in the hearts of the dark people in Africa and Asia is existing in the hearts and minds of 20 million black people in this country who have been just as thoroughly colonized as the people in Africa and Asia.

Whether that expansion is towards the beings around you or flora, fauna, and creatures. Love has so many unique yet consistent forms. People like Branson - he's an idea guru. Guys like Allan Savory - he's like Father Earth. Allan has literally discovered how to stop desertification and make Africa come alive with plant life. In each of its forms, love has an infinite scope of potential expansion, all of which I see leading to growth.

I and others on FIFA executive committee agreed to accept bribes in conjunction with selection of South Africa as host nation.

Islam doesn't have a monopoly on violence in Africa. And violence plays a particularly critical role in places where statehood is weak at best, such as the Maghreb.

When the slaves left Africa, they left us this music. They left us blues.

When you're sharing a mud hole with a wildebeest derriere in sub-Saharan Africa, that's a living hell.

What happened was I was invited to meet Tom [Hardy] to discuss a project that he had in his mind about an adventurer who returns to England from Africa with secrets and with a history, and the original idea was set some 80 years later than it is now. But in the conversation I really took to the idea and I'd wanted for a while to set something in 1830 and 1840 in London, so it struck a chord.

I could never have gone to Africa another way and had the same experience. It was my job and my joy at the same time.

The Western stereotype of Africa and its black citizens as devoid of reason and, therefore, subhuman was often shared by white master and black ex-slave alike.

I have been to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and I have witnessed the racially segregated roads and housing that reminded me so much of the conditions we experienced in South Africa under the racist system of Apartheid.

Life expectancy in many parts of Africa can be something around the age of thirty five to thirty eight. I mean you're very fortunate if you live to that age. In fact when I went to Uganda for the first time one of the things that occurred to me was that I saw very few elderly people.

Reminds me of my safari in Africa. Somebody forgot the corkscrew and for several days we had to live on nothing but food and water.

There are few people who define the word, 'rock star' better than U2's Bono. He's revered the world over not just for leading one of the biggest bands ever, but for his very public work on behalf of the underprivileged in Africa.

Africa is our center of gravity, our cultural and spiritual mother and father, our beating heart, no matter where we live on the face of this earth.

Barack Obama, you know has a lot of supporters here in America, but he's very popular internationally. It's quite interesting. This is a true story. It was in the paper. Barack Obama is so popular in the African town where his father was born, they've named a beer after him. That's true. Yeah. So next time you're in Africa, sit back, relax, and enjoy a tall, cold Barackelob Light. Good enough. Clearly not as popular a beer as it used to be.

Americans think African writers will write about the exotic, about wildlife, poverty, maybe AIDS. They come to Africa and African books with certain expectations.

The matter of people being attracted to other countries is a permanent problem in my view, it doesn't only face South Africa. A whole lot of countries in the world are faced with this problem.

I'm a great believer that, if you know how to operate in Africa, there are unbelievable opportunities.

Beyond [known peoples of black West Africa] to the south there is no civilization in the proper sense. There are only humans who are closer to dumb animals than to rational beings. They live in thickets and caves, and eat herbs and unprepared grain. They frequently eat each other. They cannot be considered human beings.

Nelson Mandela sat in a South African prison for 27 years. He was nonviolent. He negotiated his way out of jail. His honor and suffering of 27 years in a South African prison is really ultimately what brought about the freedom of South Africa. That is nonviolence.

Maybe he's been in Africa so long he has forgotten that we Christians have our own system of marriage, and it is called Monotony.

The biggest lesson from Africa was that life's joys come mostly from relationships and friendships, not from material things. I saw time and again how much fun Africans had with their families and friends and on the sports fields. they laughed all the time.

Kilimanjaro is a snow-covered mountain 19,710 feet high, and is said to be the highest mountain in Africa. Its western summit is called the Masai 'Ngaje Ngai', the House of God. Close to the western summit there is a dried and frozen carcas of a leopard. No one has explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude.

There was a time when all dark-skinned people were called Ethiopians, for the Greeks referred to Africa as, 'The Land Of The Burnt-Face People.'

There are as many Africas as there are books about Africa.

Hillary Clinton was the one pressing the hardest for bombing, and look at what happened. They not only destroyed the country, but Libya has become the center for jihad all over Africa and the Middle East. It's a total disaster in every respect, but it does not matter. Look at the so-called global war on terror.

We've got this arc of instability from North Africa to South Asia, and we have to pay close attention to it. And we have to build coalitions, something that I did to take on the Iranian nuclear program, and what I will do as president to make sure that we defeat these terrorist networks.

[Africa] is the one continent where you still have a lot more young people than old people. So making sure they're healthy, good nutrition, good education. That'll be important for the world.

I just think you people would be happier back in Africa where you came from.

When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said 'Let us pray.' We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.

Look to Africa, for there a king will be crowned.

Africa has her mouth on Moses.

If there be a God, I think he would like me to paint Africa British-Red as possible.

In Africa, you know, if you're poor, at least you can go to the forest and share some mangoes with the gorillas and monkey.

These bible people remind me of another calamity similar to this missionary scheme, when our people, or any christian power would go to Africa for the pious purpose of kidnapping negroes, the mother would cry out to her children "run, run, the christians are coming," so when ever you hear "bibles," run for your life, if you do not want your pockets picked, or to be insulted and slandered as I was... and if you hear "hopeful conversions" or the "gospel," don't stop to look behind you.