Kwame Nkrumah is one of the most favorite and legendary leaders of the African continent. He is recognized as one of the fathers of free Africa. He led the Gold Coast to independence from Britain and became Ghana’s first President and prime minister.
He was greatly involved in the Pan-African movement and a founding member of OAU. Nkrumah was known to be a political philosopher who was inspired by Marcus Garvey. Through his activism and career, his words have been inspiring. Here are some of his powerful quotes.
Kwame Nkrumah’s Strong Quotes
1. Those who would judge us merely by the heights we have achieved would do well to remember the depths from which started
2. I am not African because I was born in Africa, but because Africa was born in me.
3. The forces that unite us are intrinsic and greater than the superimposed influence that keeps us apart.
4. Africa is one continent, one people, and one notion. The notion that in order to have a nation it is necessary for there to be a common language, a common territory, and common culture has failed to stand the test of time or the scrutiny of the scientific definition of object reality.
5. It is clear that we must find an African solution to our problems, and that this can only be found in African unity. Divided we are weak; united Africa could become one of the greatest forces for good in the world.
6. Revolutions are brought about by men, by men who think as men of action and act as men of thought.
7. Action without thought is empty. Thought without action is blind.
8. It is far better to be free to govern or misgovern yourself than to be governed by anybody else.
9. Freedom is not something that one people can bestow on another as a gift. They claim it as their own and none can keep it from them.
10. Capitalism is a development by refinement from feudalism, just as feudalism is a development by refinement from slavery. Capitalism is but the gentlemen’s method of slavery.
11. I believe strongly and sincerely that with the deep-rooted wisdom and dignity, the innate respect for human lives, and the intense humanity that is our heritage, the African race, united under one federal government, will emerge not as just another world bloc to flaunt its wealth and strength, but as a Great Power whose greatness is indestructible because it is built not on fear, envy, and suspicion, nor won at the expense of others, but founded on hope, trust, friendship and directed to the good of all mankind.
12. Independence is only the prelude to a new and more involved struggle for the right to conduct our own economic and social affairs.
13. A state in the grip of neo-colonialism is not the master of its own destiny. It is this factor that makes neo-colonialism such a serious threat to world peace.
14. All people of African descent, whether they live in North or South America, the Caribbean, or in any part of the world are Africans and belong to the African nation.
15. Africa is a paradox which illustrates and highlights neo-colonialism. Her earth is rich, yet the products that come from above and below the soil continue to enrich, not Africans predominantly, but groups and individuals who operate to Africa’s impoverishment.
16. We face neither East nor West: we face forward.
17. It is far easier for the proverbial camel to pass through the needle’s eye, hump and all, than for an erstwhile colonial administration to give sound and honest counsel of a political nature to its liberated territory.
18. The masses of the people of Africa are crying for unity.
19. The best way of learning to be an independent sovereign state is to be an independent sovereign state.
20. The traditional face of Africa includes an attitude towards man which can be described as being socialist.
21. We were still regarded as representing the infancy of mankind. Our highly sophisticated culture was said to be simple and paralyzed by inertia, and we had to be encumbered with tutelage.
22. Countrymen, the task ahead is great indeed and heavy responsibility; and yet it is a noble and glorious challenge -a challenge which calls for the courage to dream, the courage to believe, the courage to dare, the courage to do, the courage to envision, the courage to fight, the courage to work, the courage to archive- to archive the highest excellencies and the fullest greatest of man. Dare we ask for more in life?
23. Long before many of us were even conscious of our own degradation, Marcus Garvey fought for African national and racial equality.
24. In spite of the long and untiring work in education and organization of the pioneers of Civil Rights; in spite of the painstaking effort made by African-American citizens of the United States to educate their children, and by hard work to achieve ‘acceptance’ in American society, African-American have remained only barely tolerated aliens in the land of their birth, the vast mass of them outside consideration of basic human justice.
25. We must unite now or perish.
26. As far as I am concerned, I am the knowledge that death can never extinguish the torch which I have been lit in Ghana and Africa. Long after I am dead and gone, the light will continue to burn and be borne aloft, giving light and guidance to all people.
27. Any meaningful humanism must begin from egalitarianism and must lead to objectively chosen policies for safeguarding and sustaining egalitarianism.
28. Africa is one continent, one people, and one nation.
29. What other countries have taken three hundred years or more to achieve, a once dependent territory must try to accomplish in a generation if it is to survive. Unless it is, as it were jet-propelled it will lag behind and thus risk everything for which it has fought.
30. We have awakened. We will not sleep anymore. Today, from now on there is a new African in the world.
31. It is in our hands to join strength, taking sustenance from our diversity, honoring our rich and varied traditions and culture but acting together for the protection and benefit of us all.
32. We all want a united Africa, united not only in our concept of what unity connotes but united in our common desire to move forward together in dealing with all the problems that can best be solved only on a continental basis.
33. We prefer self-government with danger to servitude in tranquility.
34. If their fruits we shall know them, they must first grow the fruits.
35. Never before in history has such a sweeping fervor for freedom expressed itself in great mass movements which are driving down the bastions of empire. This wind of change blowing through Africa, as I have said before, there is no ordinary wind. It is a raging hurricane against which the old order cannot stand.
36. If we are to archive revolutionary socialism, then we must avoid any suggestion that will imply that there is any separation between the socialist world and a ‘Third World’.
37. The result of neo-colonialism is that foreign capital is used for the exploitation rather than for the development of the less developed parts of the world. Investment under neo-colonialism increases rather than decreases the gap between the rich and poor countries of the world.
38. Let us all remember nothing in the world can be done unless it has the support of God.
39. The independence of Ghana is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of the African continent.
40. For centuries, Europeans dominated the African continent. The white man arrogated to himself the right to rule and to be obeyed by the non-white; his mission, he claimed, was to “civilize” Africa. Under this cloak, the Europeans robbed the continent of vast riches and inflicted unimaginable suffering on the African people.
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41. If we do not unite and combine our military resources for the common defense, our individual African states, out of a sense of insecurity, may be drawn into making defense pacts with foreign powers which may endanger the security of us all.
42. Man is regarded in Africa as primarily a spiritual being.
43. Seek ye first the political kingdom and all things be added unto it.
44. The formation of a political party linking all liberated territories and struggling parties under a common ideology will smooth the way for eventual continental unity.
45. Of all literature I studied, the book that did more than any other to fire my enthusiasm was the philosophy and opinions of Marcus Garvey.
46. We have a duty to prove to the world that Africans can conduct their own affairs with efficiency and tolerance and through the exercise of democracy. We must set an example to all Africa.
47. Never in the world has an alien ruler granted self-rule to a people on a silver platter.
48. The only colonialist or imperialist I trust is a dead one.
49. Always be the servant of the people.
50. African unity gives an indispensable continental dimension to the concept of the African nation.
