KemetLeads

Their words

Quotes on education

66 quotes from the leaders of Africa and its diaspora.

“The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.”
Steve Biko South Africa
“Our children may learn about the heroes of the past. Our task is to make ourselves the architects of the future.”
Jomo Kenyatta Kenya
“Every day we learn to forgive. But we do not want to forget.”
Paul Kagame Rwanda
“"The free education programme is the best legacy any government can bequeath to its people."”
Obafemi Awolowo Nigeria
“"Everything is my business. Everything. The state of education, the state of our economy, the state of our agriculture, the state of our transport, everything is my business."”
Hastings Banda Malawi
“To play the game is to trample on prejudice, every prejudice, and to learn to base the scale of values solely on the criteria of the mind.”
Félix Éboué Chad / French Guiana
“We must work together as a united people with one heart and one mind.”
Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah Namibia
“Cinema is the people's night school.”
Ousmane Sembène Senegal
“For authenticity not only implies a profound knowledge of one's own culture, but also a respect for the cultural heritage of others.”
Mobutu Sese Seko DR Congo
“Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs only to the people who prepare for it today.”
Malcolm X United States
“I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.”
Booker T. Washington United States
“We do not want that dreaded death sentence and we have come here today to say: try harder.”
Mia Mottley Barbados
“O, ye nominal Christians! might not an African ask you, learned you this from your God?”
Olaudah Equiano Nigeria / United Kingdom
“If you find a book you really want to read but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.”
Toni Morrison United States
“…this line of education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom to our people.”
George Washington Carver United States
“It is no less important that we know whence we came. An awareness of our past is essential to the establishment of our personality and our identity as Africans.”
Haile Selassie Ethiopia
“Egyptian antiquity is to African culture what Graeco-Roman antiquity is to Western culture. The building up of a corpus of African humanities should be based on this fact.”
Cheikh Anta Diop Senegal
“This oath, thus taken before my father, I have so strictly kept even to this day, that no man ought to doubt but that I shall be of the same mind for the rest of my life.”
Hannibal Barca Tunisia
“Even when we don't have enough jobs to give, we must still train people. Skills are assets — whether they are used here or abroad.”
Aliko Dangote Nigeria
“Education must not simply teach work — it must teach Life.”
W. E. B. Du Bois United States
“We are going to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery because whilst others might free the body, none but ourselves can free the mind.”
Marcus Garvey United States
“I was lucky to come from a difficult area. It teaches you not just about football but also life.”
Zinedine Zidane France / Algeria
“We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.”
Toni Morrison United States
“If you do your best, nobody can ask you to do it over again.”
Katherine Johnson United States
“The schools in Nigeria would rather teach you another man's history than your own.”
Burna Boy Nigeria
“Why not start by building a school to give opportunities to those young kids who dream to become someone else in the future?”
Sadio Mané Senegal
“Yet another is their zeal for learning the Koran by heart.”
Ibn Battuta Morocco
“I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. Across the color line I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas…”
W. E. B. Du Bois United States
“No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.”
Booker T. Washington United States
“If the First Amendment means anything, it means that a State has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his own house, what books he may read or what films he may watch.”
Thurgood Marshall United States
“Please take more attention to the young ones, to the kids all over the world. We need them too much.”
Pelé Brazil
“My ambition is to build an industrial school in Africa.”
Madam C. J. Walker United States
“Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge.”
Toni Morrison United States
“Follow your passion. Whatever you're doing, do your best at all times and make it as correct as possible.”
Katherine Johnson United States
“With every word we utter, with every action we take, we know our kids are watching us.”
Michelle Obama United States
“Knowledge is a natural right of every human being of which no one has the right to deprive him or her under any pretext…”
Muammar Gaddafi Libya
“I have indeed — praise be to God — attained my desire in this world, which was to travel through the earth, and I have attained therein what none other has attained to my knowledge.”
Ibn Battuta Morocco
“I grew up like a neglected weed — ignorant of liberty, having no experience of it.”
Harriet Tubman United States
“I made up my mind that I would not give in any longer to legally-imposed racial segregation.”
Rosa Parks United States
“We were taught that hard work and education were the keys to success in this country.”
Colin Powell United States
“Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery; none but ourselves can free our minds.”
Bob Marley Jamaica
“I respectfully remind you sir, that we have been the most patient of all people.”
Jackie Robinson United States
“Girls are capable of doing everything men are capable of doing. Sometimes they have more imagination than men.”
Katherine Johnson United States
“Years and a chequered experience of good and evil fortune have so disillusioned me that I prefer to take reason rather than Fortune as my guide.”
Hannibal Barca Tunisia
“I have been fighting all my life and I am ready and hundred percent sure I will win at the end of the day.”
Aliko Dangote Nigeria
“I want the younger generations and our children to know the truth and have their foundation in the truth as opposed to in the lies of Europeans and colonial masters.”
Burna Boy Nigeria
“[I dedicate it to] the children in Egypt and Africa… to remind them to never stop dreaming and never stop believing in themselves.”
Mohamed Salah Egypt
“All you need to do is know yourself to set yourself free.”
Muhammad Ali United States
“He wants the public schools and colleges desegregated so that his children can receive the best education that Mississippi has to offer.”
Medgar Evers United States
“Dream of teachers who teach for life and not for a living.”
Jesse Jackson United States
“It is necessary for our children to grow up healthy with functional and creative minds.”
Huey P. Newton United States
“My final prayer: O my body, make of me always a man who questions!”
Frantz Fanon Martinique / Algeria
“I apologise to the millions of children who saw this act, and to the educators who teach what should and should not be done.”
Zinedine Zidane France / Algeria
“I want them to see the Great Creator in the smallest and apparently the most insignificant things.”
George Washington Carver United States
“You learn if you want to. So you've got to want to learn.”
Katherine Johnson United States
“The only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work for them.”
Michelle Obama United States
“Being able to see yourself reflected in imaginative and aspirational material is so important.”
Lupita Nyong'o Kenya
“I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one.”
Frederick Douglass United States
“The individual who can do something that the world wants done will, in the end, make his way regardless of race.”
Booker T. Washington United States
“We will only attain freedom if we learn to appreciate what is different and muster the courage to discover what is fundamentally the same.”
Thurgood Marshall United States
“The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.”
Muhammad Ali United States
“We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of self.”
Huey P. Newton United States
“There is no demiurge, no illustrious man taking responsibility for everything, but … the demiurge is the people and the magic lies in their hands and their hands alone.”
Frantz Fanon Martinique / Algeria
“This is what I do with every failure, every crisis, every difficult time — I say, what is this here to teach me? And as soon as you get the lesson, you get to move on.”
Oprah Winfrey United States
“I counted everything. I counted the steps to the road, the steps up to church, the number of dishes and silverware I washed … anything that could be counted, I did.”
Katherine Johnson United States
“Education is not what a person is able to hold in his head, so much as it is what a person is able to find.”
Booker T. Washington United States