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Their words

Quotes on hope

115 quotes from the leaders of Africa and its diaspora.

“It always seems impossible until it's done.”
Nelson Mandela 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
“The king who was my predecessor did not believe that it was impossible to discover the furthest limit of the Atlantic Ocean and wished vehemently to do so.”
Mansa Musa Mali
“Africa is not a problem to be avoided nor is it to be pitied. Africa is nothing less than the key to the world's future.”
Bola Tinubu Nigeria
“I am the happiest man in the world to be the first human to run under two hours and I can tell people that no human is limited.”
Eliud Kipchoge Kenya
“…no matter where you're from, your dreams are valid.”
Lupita Nyong'o Kenya
“I remember my sister was also born at home because there is no hospital in our village. It was a really, really sad situation for everyone. I wanted to build one to give people hope.”
Sadio Mané Senegal
“Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs only to the people who prepare for it today.”
Malcolm X United States
“No change is possible without hope. No movement is possible without hope.”
Angela Davis United States
“Keep hope alive.”
Jesse Jackson United States
“Anything is possible. I don't think limits.”
Usain Bolt Jamaica
“There can be no real peace and security until there be first justice enjoyed by all the inhabitants of that beautiful land.”
Desmond Tutu South Africa
“The foundation of everything is unity. … we chose to think beyond the horizon of tragedy, and become a people with a future.”
Paul Kagame Rwanda
“This is not the time to look ahead with doubt, but the time to look ahead with hope and confidence.”
Samia Suluhu Hassan Tanzania
“Today, we all wear the jersey of Liberia, and the victory belongs to the people, to peace, and to democracy.”
George Weah Liberia
“I want to make the sport an interesting sport whereby all the human beings can run and together we can make this world a beautiful world.”
Eliud Kipchoge Kenya
“It was tough because I didn't have anyone behind me to push me to achieve my dream. But I never stopped dreaming.”
Sadio Mané Senegal
“When the bells of peace ring, there will be no hands to beat the drums of war.”
Anwar Sadat Egypt
“Every time I stay true to myself, it just always goes right.”
Tems Nigeria
“While I may be the first woman in this office, I will not be the last, because every little girl watching tonight sees that this is a country of possibilities.”
Kamala Harris United States
“We have such a strong desire to live with hope and human dignity that existence without them is impossible.”
Huey P. Newton United States
“I believe that love is the most important thing we can take from life, because everything else passes. … Love! Love! Love!”
Pelé Brazil
“I was lucky to come from a difficult area. It teaches you not just about football but also life.”
Zinedine Zidane France / Algeria
“I am not ashamed of my past. I am not ashamed of my humble beginning.”
Madam C. J. Walker United States
“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
“You may trod me in the very dirt / But still, like dust, I'll rise.”
Maya Angelou United States
“I want all the girls watching… to know that a new day is on the horizon.”
Oprah Winfrey United States
“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
“Our Armageddon is past. Africa has been reborn as a free continent and Africans have been reborn as free men.”
Haile Selassie Ethiopia
“We are too great a nation and too grounded as a people to rob ourselves of our finest destiny.”
Bola Tinubu Nigeria
“No one should think that what is happening today is a mere change of guard: it is a fundamental change in the politics of our country.”
Yoweri Museveni Uganda
“Beauty was not a thing that I could acquire or consume. It was something that I just had to be.”
Lupita Nyong'o Kenya
“Seeing both leaders side by side for the national anthems was very special. I felt then that the Ivory Coast was born again.”
Didier Drogba Côte d'Ivoire
“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
“I think if anyone feels how I felt at the time, hold on.”
Tems Nigeria
“I know Amun helps me more than a million troops, more than a hundred thousand charioteers, more than ten thousand brothers and sons who are united as one heart.”
Ramesses II Egypt
“A return to authenticity is not narrow nationalism, a blind return to the past. On the contrary, it is a useful instrument for peace among nations, a condition for existence among peoples.”
Mobutu Sese Seko DR Congo
“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
“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
“We must start from the simple premise that Africa's future is up to Africans.”
Barack Obama United States
“We recognize that we are collective agents of history and that history cannot be deleted like web pages.”
Angela Davis United States
“The years of change are upon us. In the racial picture things will never be as they once were. History has reached a turning point, here and over the world.”
Medgar Evers United States
“Dream with ambition, lead with conviction, and see yourselves in a way that others may not, simply because they've never seen it before.”
Kamala Harris United States
“Let your dreams be your only limitations. Now and forever.”
Colin Powell United States
“I've worked all my life for this moment.”
Usain Bolt Jamaica
“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
“Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, / I am the dream and the hope of the slave.”
Maya Angelou United States
“Great men have done great things here and will again and we can make America what America must become.”
James Baldwin United States
“The one quality all of them seem to share is an ability to maintain hope for a brighter morning, even during our darkest nights.”
Oprah Winfrey United States
“My work is that of conservation, the saving of things that the average person throws away.”
George Washington Carver 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
“The forces that unite us are far greater than the difficulties that divide us at present, and our goal must be the establishment of Africa's dignity, progress and prosperity.”
Kwame Nkrumah Ghana
“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
“I want peace. Happiness. Not only for myself. For everybody. If I get it for myself I can't have peace. When everybody has peace then I will have peace.”
Fela Kuti Nigeria
“God created us so that we should form the human family, existing together because we were made for one another.”
Desmond Tutu South Africa
“I think I fulfilled the legacy by winning the marathon for the second time. That's my total happiness, my inspiration for the next generation.”
Eliud Kipchoge Kenya
“What is fundamentally beautiful is compassion for yourself and for those around you.”
Lupita Nyong'o Kenya
“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
“A people that never abdicates, that never gives up, that stands up to adversity.”
Ibrahim Traoré Burkina Faso
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
Martin Luther King Jr. United States
“The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”
Frederick Douglass 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
“So, too, with survival programs, which are emergency services. In themselves they do not change social conditions, but they are life-saving vehicles until conditions change.”
Huey P. Newton United States
“Until the day when God shall deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is summed up in these two words: ‘Wait and hope.’”
Alexandre Dumas France
“To be recognised by a whole country is incredible. … It's a message to everybody — politicians, the kids I grew up with, ordinary French people — about what can be done.”
Zinedine Zidane France / Algeria
“I hope you will catch the inspiration, grasp the opportunity to do something.”
Madam C. J. Walker United States
“History, despite its wrenching pain, / Cannot be unlived, but if faced / With courage, need not be lived again.”
Maya Angelou United States
“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
“Having looked the beast of the past in the eye … let us shut the door on the past – not in order to forget it but in order not to allow it to imprison us.”
Desmond Tutu South Africa
“No community is beyond repair, and the dignity of a people is never fully extinguished.”
Paul Kagame Rwanda
“Let's all keep running. Together, there is nothing we cannot achieve.”
Eliud Kipchoge Kenya
“[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
“I dedicate this award to the youth of Senegal.”
Sadio Mané Senegal
“…the real genius of Egypt has been one of peace… and its ambition has been to build not to destroy, to create not to annihilate, to coexist not to eliminate.”
Anwar Sadat Egypt
“I made it a habit on my journey never, so far as possible, to cover a second time any road that I had once travelled.”
Ibn Battuta Morocco
“The Eldorado our peoples dream of, we can build it here, and we have faith in this people.”
Ibrahim Traoré Burkina Faso
“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
“…those who are happiest are those who do the most for others.”
Booker T. Washington United States
“The true miracle was not the birth of the Constitution, but its life, a life nurtured through two turbulent centuries of our own making.”
Thurgood Marshall United States
“On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.”
Barack Obama United States
“Walls turned sideways are bridges.”
Angela Davis United States
“Dream of teachers who teach for life and not for a living.”
Jesse Jackson United States
“Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.”
Colin Powell United States
“It is necessary for our children to grow up healthy with functional and creative minds.”
Huey P. Newton United States
“If I have accomplished anything in life it is because I have been willing to work hard.”
Madam C. J. Walker United States
“I want them to see the Great Creator in the smallest and apparently the most insignificant things.”
George Washington Carver 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
“That until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned… the dream of lasting peace and world citizenship and the rule of international morality will remain but a fleeting illusion.”
Haile Selassie Ethiopia
“My appeal is ultimately directed to us all, black and white together, to close the chapter on our past and to strive together for this beautiful and blessed land as the rainbow people of God.”
Desmond Tutu South Africa
“Peace once established is a better and safer thing than hoping for victory; that is in your hands, this in the hands of the gods.”
Hannibal Barca Tunisia
“Our job is to make sure that every generation in Africa, enjoys a better life than the previous one.”
Paul Kagame Rwanda
“We owe this noble mission our courage. We must be brave and we must be bold.”
Cyril Ramaphosa South Africa
“Africa is home. Africa is where I was born… Africa is a small continent with a lot of energy and energetic youth.”
Eliud Kipchoge Kenya
“I don't want children to grow up the same way I did, with separations and borders and, 'We are all better than you'.”
Burna Boy Nigeria
“Being able to see yourself reflected in imaginative and aspirational material is so important.”
Lupita Nyong'o Kenya
“I have benefited first-hand from the power of sports to lead a healthy life and I am committed to working with WHO to share such gains worldwide.”
Didier Drogba Côte d'Ivoire
“Let there be no more wars or bloodshed between Arabs and Israelis. Let there be no more suffering or denial of rights. Let there be no more despair or loss of faith.”
Anwar Sadat Egypt
“I don't want to limit God. I just want to do as much as possible.”
Tems Nigeria
“Darkness cannot put out darkness; only light can do that.”
Martin Luther King Jr. 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
“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 are in a righteous struggle. We are living in a great day, a momentous day, a glorious day…”
Medgar Evers United States
“You must not surrender! You may or may not get there but just know that you're qualified! And you hold on, and hold out!”
Jesse Jackson United States
“There is no royal and flower strewn road to success, and if there is I have not found it…”
Madam C. J. Walker United States
“You might encounter many defeats but you must never be defeated, ever.”
Maya Angelou United States
“We shall bring about not the peace of rifles and bayonets, but the peace of hearts and goodwill.”
Patrice Lumumba DR Congo
“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.”
Martin Luther King Jr. United States
“I'm asking you to believe. Not in my ability to bring about change — but in yours.”
Barack Obama United States
“Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime.”
John Lewis United States
“You have power, and don't you ever listen when anyone tells you something is impossible because it has never been done before.”
Kamala Harris United States
“For Europe, for ourselves and for humanity, comrades, we must make a new start, develop a new way of thinking, and endeavor to create a new man.”
Frantz Fanon Martinique / Algeria
“I went to work every day for 33 years happy. Never did I get up and say I don't want to go to work.”
Katherine Johnson United States