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Their words

Quotes on freedom

112 quotes from the leaders of Africa and its diaspora.

“Our independence is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of Africa.”
Kwame Nkrumah Ghana
“Our liberty is meaningless unless all Africans are free.”
Haile Selassie Ethiopia
“We prefer freedom in poverty to opulence in slavery.”
Ahmed Sékou Touré Guinea
“The road to freedom is via the cross.”
Albert Luthuli South Africa
“I would rather die free than live as a subject of the colonizer.”
Samori Touré Guinea
“It is not enough to speak of human rights in the formal sense of freedom of speech, freedom from arrest and that sort of thing. We must also speak of freedom from hunger, freedom from disease, freedom from living under a leaking roof.”
Yoweri Museveni Uganda
“"It is better to die a free man than to live as a slave."”
Nnamdi Azikiwe Nigeria
“"The free education programme is the best legacy any government can bequeath to its people."”
Obafemi Awolowo Nigeria
“The hardest lesson of my life has come to me late. It is that a nation can win freedom without its people becoming free.”
Joshua Nkomo Zimbabwe
“My heart is filled with pride as I contemplate my nation reconciled, its memory rebuilt and its history freed of its resentments.”
Hassan Gouled Aptidon Djibouti
“I was free; but there was no one to welcome me to the land of freedom. I was a stranger in a strange land.”
Harriet Tubman United States
“I don't have to be what you want me to be. I'm free to be who I want.”
Muhammad Ali United States
“Nobody's free until everybody's free.”
Fannie Lou Hamer United States
“The only way we gonna stop them white men from whuppin' us is to take over. We been saying freedom for six years — what we are going to start saying now is Black Power.”
Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) United States
“Freedom is never granted; it is won. Justice is never given; it is exacted.”
A. Philip Randolph United States
“In overthrowing me, you have cut down in Saint-Domingue only the trunk of the tree of liberty; it will spring up again from the roots, for they are numerous and deep.”
Toussaint Louverture Haiti
“The only great men among the unfree and the oppressed are those who struggle to destroy the oppressor.”
Walter Rodney Guyana
“…this line of education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom to our people.”
George Washington Carver United States
“Without dignity there is no freedom, without justice there is no dignity and without independence there are no free men.”
Patrice Lumumba DR Congo
“My country has been turned by the Verwoerd Government into a huge prison.”
Miriam Makeba South Africa
“The constitution contained in the Bill before us is the product of negotiation and compromise. Yet the central tenets of a democratic, just and equitable society remain uncompromised, because freedom is non-negotiable.”
Cyril Ramaphosa South Africa
“We African heads of state must stop behaving like puppets who dance every time the imperialists pull the strings.”
Ibrahim Traoré Burkina Faso
“The Zairean experience is based on a political philosophy that we call authenticity. This is an awareness on the part of the people of Zaire that they should return to their beginnings and search for the values of their ancestors.”
Mobutu Sese Seko DR Congo
“We want freedom by any means necessary. We want justice by any means necessary. We want equality by any means necessary.”
Malcolm X United States
“What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.”
Frederick Douglass United States
“There was one of two things I had a right to, liberty, or death; if I could not have one, I would have de oder; for no man should take me alive.”
Harriet Tubman 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
“Prisons do not disappear problems, they disappear human beings.”
Angela Davis United States
“I, the man of color, want only this: That the tool never possess the man. That the enslavement of man by man cease forever.”
Frantz Fanon Martinique / Algeria
“I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves, and I watch my daughters — two beautiful, intelligent, black young women — playing with their dogs on the White House lawn.”
Michelle Obama United States
“Independence is only the prelude to a new and more involved struggle for the right to conduct our own economic and social affairs.”
Kwame Nkrumah Ghana
“The slave who is not able to take charge of his own revolt deserves no pity for his lot.”
Thomas Sankara Burkina Faso
“I prefer to die with my head held high, with unshakeable faith and deep confidence in the destiny of my country, rather than live in submission and contempt for sacred principles.”
Patrice Lumumba DR Congo
“Our Armageddon is past. Africa has been reborn as a free continent and Africans have been reborn as free men.”
Haile Selassie Ethiopia
“Today, citizens, we say: this is our money, returned to us. These are our rights, about which we kept silent, come back to us.”
Gamal Abdel Nasser Egypt
“Perhaps oppression dehumanizes the oppressor as much as, if not more than, the oppressed. They need each other to become truly free, to become human.”
Desmond Tutu South Africa
“If ever we look to the past, let us do so for the lesson the past has taught us, namely that oppression and racism are inequities that must never again find scope in our political and social system.”
Robert Mugabe Zimbabwe
“Only the disciplined ones are free in life. If you aren't disciplined, you are a slave to your moods.”
Eliud Kipchoge Kenya
“Beauty was not a thing that I could acquire or consume. It was something that I just had to be.”
Lupita Nyong'o Kenya
“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”
Martin Luther King Jr. United States
“We declare our right on this earth to be a man, to be a human being, to be respected as a human being…”
Malcolm X United States
“But I was free, and they should be free. I would make a home in the North and bring them there, God helping me.”
Harriet Tubman United States
“We had to take a stand to at least let it be known that we want to be free regardless of the conditions under which we were living.”
Rosa Parks United States
“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
“Look for me in the whirlwind or the storm, look for me all around you, for, with God's grace, I shall come… to aid you in the fight for Liberty, Freedom and Life.”
Marcus Garvey 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
“We must start from the simple premise that Africa's future is up to Africans.”
Barack Obama United States
“The vote is the most powerful nonviolent change agent you have in a democratic society. You must use it because it is not guaranteed. You can lose it.”
John Lewis United States
“The time was fast approaching when the first should be last and the last should be first.”
Nat Turner United States
“If the fight is spiritual, then fight spiritual, because everywhere the fight goes on.”
Bob Marley Jamaica
“Every time a man has contributed to the victory of the dignity of the spirit, every time a man has said no to an attempt to subjugate his fellows, I have felt solidarity with his act.”
Frantz Fanon Martinique / Algeria
“It was not to liberty, that goddess of all, that mothers sacrificed their children: it was to the ambition, the selfishness, the pride of one man.”
Alexandre Dumas France
“Negroes were stirred up long before there was a Communist Party, and they'll stay stirred up long after the party has disappeared — unless Jim Crow has disappeared by then as well.”
Jackie Robinson United States
“Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, / I am the dream and the hope of the slave.”
Maya Angelou United States
“We encourage aid that helps us do without aid. But in general, the policy of assistance and aid has only disorganized us, enslaved us, and made us shirk our responsibilities.”
Thomas Sankara Burkina Faso
“Do not weep for me. I know that my tormented country will be able to defend its freedom and its independence.”
Patrice Lumumba DR Congo
“Long battles lie ahead of us, so that we may live free, live with dignity, live with pride.”
Gamal Abdel Nasser Egypt
“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
“Freedom and democracy are the foundation of peace in a country… there is no freedom or democracy that is not protected and governed by laws, procedures and regulations.”
Samia Suluhu Hassan Tanzania
“Military coups are wrong, as is any tilted civilian political arrangement that perpetuates injustice.”
Bola Tinubu Nigeria
“The sovereign power in the land must be the population, not the government. The government should not be the master, but the servant of the people.”
Yoweri Museveni Uganda
“Do not abandon thine own wife while she lives, nor permit a triumph to be celebrated over myself in my person, but hide and bury me here with thyself…”
Cleopatra VII Egypt
“I was at a crossroads, to do what I really want to do or do what people were telling me to do… I decided I don't care what people think.”
Tems Nigeria
“Despite the huge organization created to perpetuate the slavery of the black man, the whites of Europe could not extinguish the flame of freedom and dignity in black Africa.”
Mobutu Sese Seko DR Congo
“Human rights are something you were born with. Human rights are your God-given rights. Human rights are the rights that are recognized by all nations of this earth.”
Malcolm X United States
“The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”
Frederick Douglass United States
“I grew up like a neglected weed — ignorant of liberty, having no experience of it.”
Harriet Tubman United States
“Chance has never yet satisfied the hope of a suffering people. Action, self-reliance, the vision of self and the future have been the only means by which the oppressed have seen and realized the light of their own freedom.”
Marcus Garvey United States
“In my life I have done all I can to demonstrate that the way of peace, the way of love and nonviolence is the more excellent way. Now it is your turn to let freedom ring.”
John Lewis United States
“The real content of any kind of revolutionary thrust lies in the principles, in the goal that you're striving for, not in the way you reach them.”
Angela Davis United States
“The Negro has been here in America since 1619, a total of 344 years. He is not going anywhere else; this country is his home.”
Medgar Evers United States
“America's democracy is not guaranteed. It is only as strong as our willingness to fight for it, to guard it and never take it for granted.”
Kamala Harris United States
“I am here loaded with chains, and willing to suffer the fate that awaits me.”
Nat Turner United States
“Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery; none but ourselves can free our minds.”
Bob Marley Jamaica
“I am not the slave of the Slavery that dehumanized my ancestors.”
Frantz Fanon Martinique / Algeria
“Nelson Mandela was one of the most influential people in my life. He was my hero, my friend, and also a companion to me in our fight for the people and for world peace.”
Pelé Brazil
“We cannot be free until they are free.”
James Baldwin United States
“'Seek ye first the political kingdom' became the principal slogan of the Convention People's Party, for without political independence none of our plans for social and economic development could be put into effect.”
Kwame Nkrumah Ghana
“We shall show the world what the black man can do when he works in freedom, and we shall make the Congo a beacon for the whole of Africa.”
Patrice Lumumba DR Congo
“They have released you now, but you never released yourself.”
Fela Kuti Nigeria
“So Blair keep your England and let me keep my Zimbabwe.”
Robert Mugabe Zimbabwe
“What democracy demands is that we do not resolve differences through force and repression. But we make allowance for the legitimacy of views that differ from our own.”
Bola Tinubu Nigeria
“We must let the people decide, and then we must respect their decision. That is indeed the true essence of democracy.”
George Weah Liberia
“Even the simplest forms of animal life, such as amoebas, hydras or earthworms, know their interests. … Why should Africans not know their interests and what is good for them?”
Yoweri Museveni Uganda
“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
“It's about breaking free from any societal pressure, any chain. It's about not being afraid to be yourself and just living your life regardless of what people say.”
Tems Nigeria
“A fruit falls only when it is ripe; but in the storms and the tempests of history the fruit falls, whether ripe or not.”
Mobutu Sese Seko DR Congo
“You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.”
Frederick Douglass United States
“I have seen hundreds of escaped slaves, but I never saw one who was willing to go back and be a slave.”
Harriet Tubman United States
“I felt that it was not right to be deprived of freedom when we were living in the Home of the Brave and Land of the Free.”
Rosa Parks United States
“Work, culture, liberty — all these we need, not singly but together, not successively but together, each growing and aiding each…”
W. E. B. Du Bois United States
“I know no national boundary where the Negro is concerned. The whole world is my province until Africa is free.”
Marcus Garvey United States
“All you need to do is know yourself to set yourself free.”
Muhammad Ali United States
“To those who have said, “Be patient and wait,” we have long said that we cannot be patient. We do not want our freedom gradually, but we want to be free now!”
John Lewis United States
“Walls turned sideways are bridges.”
Angela Davis United States
“17 million Negroes cannot do as you suggest and wait for the hearts of men to change. We want to enjoy now the rights that we feel we are entitled to as Americans.”
Jackie Robinson United States
“You are moving in the direction of freedom and the function of freedom is to free somebody else.”
Toni Morrison United States
“You only are free when you realize you belong no place — you belong every place — no place at all.”
Maya Angelou United States
“A State in the grip of neo-colonialism is not master of its own destiny.”
Kwame Nkrumah Ghana
“We should undertake to live as Africans. It is the only way to live free and to live in dignity.”
Thomas Sankara Burkina Faso
“The Congo's independence is a decisive step towards the liberation of the whole African continent.”
Patrice Lumumba DR Congo
“I am not a servant of anybody. I am a freedom fighter; that is why I do what I do. … If anybody thinks you gave me a job, he is deceiving himself.”
Yoweri Museveni Uganda
“I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one.”
Frederick Douglass United States
“The only tired I was, was tired of giving in.”
Rosa Parks United States
“Sloth, neglect, indifference caused us to be slaves. Confidence, conviction, action will cause us to be free men to-day.”
Marcus Garvey 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
“Selma shows us that America is not the project of any one person. Because the single-most powerful word in our democracy is the word “We.””
Barack Obama United States
“We face neither East nor West: we face forward.”
Kwame Nkrumah Ghana
“There is no true social revolution without the liberation of women. May my eyes never see… a society where half the people are held in silence.”
Thomas Sankara Burkina Faso
“We claim for ourselves every single right that belongs to a freeborn American, political, civil, and social; and until we get these rights we will never cease to protest and assail the ears of America.”
W. E. B. Du Bois United States
“We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our Black community.”
Huey P. Newton United States
“It comes as a great shock around the age of 5, 6, or 7 to discover that the flag to which you have pledged allegiance, along with everybody else, has not pledged allegiance to you.”
James Baldwin United States