Kwame Nkrumah Quotes

You can no longer see or identify yourself solely as a member of a tribe, but as a citizen of a nation of one people working toward a common purpose.

I am not African because I was born in Africa but because Africa was born in me.

Most people write me off when they see me. They do not know my story. They say I am just an African. They judge me before they get to know me. What they do not know is The pride I have in the blood that runs through my veins; The pride I have in my rich culture and the history of my people; The pride I have in my strong family ties and the deep connection to my community; The pride I have in the African music, African art, and African dance; The pride I have in my name and the meaning behind it. Just as my name has meaning, I too will live my life with meaning. So you think I am nothing? Don’t worry about what I am now, For what I will be, I am gradually becoming. I will raise my head high wherever I go Because of my African pride, And nobody will take that away from me.

We face neither East nor West; We face forward

The forces that unite us are intrinsic and greater than the superimposed influences that keep us apart.

Action without thought is empty. Thought without action is blind.

When I look at Africa many questions come to mind, many times I have asked myself what would happen if Dr Kwame Nkrumah and Patrice Lumumba were to rise up and see what is happening, many times I have asked myself what would happen if Nelson Madiba Mandela were to rise up and see what is happening, because what they will be confronted with is an Africa where the Democratic Republic of Congo is unsettled, there is a war going on there, but it's not on the front pages of our newspapers because we don't even control our newspapers and the media.

Thought without practice is empty; and action without thought is blind." (The other 'quote' has it backwards.)

All the fair brave words spoken about freedom that had been broadcast to the four corners of the earth took seed and grew where they had not been intended.

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, is no ordinary wind. It is a raging hurricane against which the old order cannot stand [...] The great millions of Africa, and of Asia, have grown impatient of being hewers of wood and drawers of water, and are rebelling against the false belief that providence created some to be menials of others. Hence the twentieth century has become the century of colonial emancipation, the century of continuing revolution which must finally witness the total liberation of Africa from colonial rule and imperialist exploitation.

It is far better to be free to govern or misgovern yourself than to be governed by anybody else. — Kwame Nkrumah

We are the children of Nelson Mandela; we are the children of Kwame Nkrumah; we are the children of Haile Selassie; we are the children of Samora Machel; we are the children of Robert Mugabe; we are the children of Patrice Lumumba; we are the children of Julius Kambarage Nyerere. We know who we are.

Colonialism and its attitudes die hard, like the attitudes of slavery, whose hangover still dominates behaviour in certain parts of the Western hemisphere. Before slavery was practised in the New World, there was no special denigration of Africans. Travellers to this continent described the inhabitants in their records with natural curiosity and examination to be expected of individuals coming from different environments. It was when slave trade and slavery began to develop ghastly proportions that made them the base of that capital accumulation which assisted the rise of Western industrialism, that a new attitude towards Africans emerged. 'Slavery in the Caribbean has been too narrowly identified with the man of colour. A racial twist has thereby been given to what is basically an economic phenomenon. Slavery was not born of racism, rather racism was the consequence of slavery.' With this racial twist was invented the myth of colour inferiority. This myth supported the the subsequent rape of our continent with its despoliation and continuing exploitation under the advanced forms of colonialism and imperialism.

If we are to achieve revolutionary Socialism, then we must avoid any suggestion that will imply that there is any separation between the Socialist world and a 'Third World'.

Practice without thought is blind. Thought without practice is empty. (note: Two versions of this do not cite the book and are not exact. Action is not part of the equation.)

If by their fruits we shall know them, they must first grow the fruits.

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, is no ordinary wind. It is a raging hurricane against which the old order cannot stand.

When Kwame Nkrumah, the pro-Chinese ruler of Ghana, was on a state visit to Beijing, Mossad orchestrated the uprising that led to both Nkrumah’s overthrow and the destruction of the CSIS infrastructure in the country.

For this end Africa needs a new type of citizen, a dedicated, modest, honest and informed man. A man submerges self in service to the nation and mankind. A man who abhors greed and detests vanity. A new type of man whose humility is his strength and whose integrity is his greatness

King established a Pan-African frame for what was to follow. He harkened back to a night in West Africa in 1957 when he stood with Ralph Bunche and the black congressmen Adam Clayton Powell and Charles Diggs and witnessed Kwame Nkrumah’s installation as the first president of the new nation of Ghana. Being there had called up the most primal associations, linking him, present-day Africans, and his own slave forebears in an intimate embrace. He had strolled the streets of Accra and wept with joy as he heard both young and old Ghanaians calling out “free-doom!

Your secret behavior will be inherited by your children! If Nelson Mandela was a symbol of reconciliation; then reconciliation is our character. If Kwame Nkrumah was a symbol of unity; then unity is our character. If Patrice Lumumba was a symbol of patriotism; then patriotism is our character. If Robert Mugabe is a symbol of dictatorship; then dictatorship is our character. If Haile Selassie was a symbol of heroism; then heroism is our character. If Samora Machel was a symbol of socialism; then socialism is our character. If Julius Kambarage Nyerere was a symbol of justice; then justice is our character. We are the children of the African patriarchs! They are the fathers of the African nations! We have inherited their secret behaviors.

The traditional face of Africa includes an attitude towards man which can only be described, in its social manifestation, as being socialist. This arises from the fact that man is regarded in Africa as primarily a spiritual being, a being endowed originally with a certain inward dignity, integrity, and value. It stands refreshingly opposed to the Christian idea of the original sin and degradation of man.

The passage from the ancestral line of slavery via feudalism and capitalism to socialism can only lie through revolution: it cannot lie through reform. For in reform, fundamental principles are held constant, and the details of their expression are modified. In the words of Marx, it leaves the pillars of the building intact. Indeed sometimes, reform itself may be initiated by the necessities of preserving identical fundamental principles. Reform is a tactic of self-preservation.

Socialism in Africa today tends to lose its objective content in favor of a distracting terminology and in favor of a general confusion. Discussion centers more on the various conceivable types of socialism than upon the need for socialist development.

The following year Carmichael began a campaign to promote armed warfare in American cities and was briefly made "prime minister" of the Black Panther Party for his efforts. Ever the racist, Carmichael tried to persuade the Panthers to break off their alliances with whites, but failed. This led to his expulsion from the party and a ritual beating administered by his former comrades. Shortly thereafter, Carmichael left the United States for Africa. In Africa, he changed his name to Kwame Ture, thereby honoring two dictators (Kwame Nkrumah and Sekou Toure) who caused untold misery to their own peoples. He took up residence as the personal guest of the sadistic Toure, Guinea's paranoid dictator, whose reputation was built on the torture-murders of thousands of his African subjects. Some 250,000 Guineans were driven into exile during Carmichael's stay there, without a protest from this New Left leader.

Even the cinema stories of fabulous Hollywood are loaded. One has only to listen to the cheers of an African audience as Hollywood’s heroes slaughter red Indians or Asiatics to understand the effectiveness of this weapon. For, in the developing continents, where the colonialist heritage has left a vast majority still illiterate, even the smallest child gets the message contained in the blood and thunder stories emanating from California. And along with murder and the Wild West goes an incessant barrage of anti-socialist propaganda, in which the trade union man, the revolutionary, or the man of dark skin is generally cast as the villain, while the policeman, the gum-shoe, the Federal agent — in a word, the CIA — type spy is ever the hero. Here, truly, is the ideological under-belly of those political murders which so often use local people as their instruments. While Hollywood takes care of fiction, the enormous monopoly press, together with the outflow of slick, clever, expensive magazines, attends to what it chooses to call ‘news. Within separate countries, one or two news agencies control the news handouts, so that a deadly uniformity is achieved, regardless of the number of separate newspapers or magazines; while internationally, the financial preponderance of the United States is felt more and more through its foreign correspondents and offices abroad, as well as through its influence over inter-national capitalist journalism. Under this guise, a flood of anti-liberation propaganda emanates from the capital cities of the West, directed against China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Algeria, Ghana and all countries which hack out their own independent path to freedom. Prejudice is rife. For example, wherever there is armed struggle against the forces of reaction, the nationalists are referred to as rebels, terrorists, or frequently ‘communist terrorists'!

People may not recognized what you are doing today but the future generation will see and ask who did this?.... People who will be the at that time will boldly say"Shamala did this".Ask kwame nkrumah will tell you..

In Africa, there are still more men, if you’re looking for courage. There, a few years back, the colonial powers were the ones who owned the government, who owned the guns—the ones who were responsible for whether you ate, had a job, whether your children got an education, or whether you lived or died. But that colonial system was challenged by, in addition to Nelson Mandela, men like Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Nnamdi Azikiwe of Nigeria, Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, and men in others places. They knew that the authorities would try to eliminate them.

Sisi ni watoto wa Nelson Mandela; sisi ni watoto wa Kwame Nkrumah; sisi ni watoto wa Haile Selassie; sisi ni watoto wa Samora Machel; sisi ni watoto wa Robert Mugabe; sisi ni watoto wa Patrice Lumumba; sisi ni watoto wa Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere. Tunajua sisi ni nani.

Tabia yako ya siri mwanao atakuwa nayo! Kama Nelson Mandela alikuwa alama ya msamaha, msamaha ni tabia yetu. Kama Kwame Nkrumah alikuwa alama ya umoja, umoja ni tabia yetu. Kama Patrice Lumumba alikuwa alama ya uzalendo, uzalendo ni tabia yetu. Kama Robert Mugabe ni alama ya udikteta, udikteta ni tabia yetu. Kama Haile Selassie alikuwa alama ya ushujaa, ushujaa ni tabia yetu. Kama Samora Machel alikuwa alama ya ujamaa, ujamaa ni tabia yetu. Kama Julius Kambarage Nyerere alikuwa alama ya haki, haki ni tabia yetu. Sisi ni watoto wa wazalendo wa Afrika! Wao ni baba wa mataifa ya Afrika! Tumerithi tabia zao za siri.

The US colonization of the Philippines was brutal, but it did not end with formal independence. The Philippines has existed in a state of what Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana's independence leader, referred to as 'neocolonialism': a condition in which a state is, 'in theory, independent and has all the outward trappings of international sovereignty,' but 'in reality its economic system and thus its political policy is directed from the outside.' This was a familiar situation for many newly independent nations. ... For decades, the development of the Philippines was hampered by collusion between the US, international institutions, domestic capitalists, and a corrupt political class, which together deprived Filipinos of basic human rights to ensure the country would remain a haven for international capital. Bello himself was referred to the situation faced by the Philippines after independence as neocolonial.

Carmichael’s volkish black nationalism and creation of new values required, as the Black Muslims insisted, shedding a false enslaving identity for a true (i.e., authentic) one rooted in black Africa. This included shedding that most obvious sign of identity, one’s name. So just as Malcolm Little dropped his “slave name” for a simple X, representing his lack of identity in a white racist society, the boxer Cassius Clay reemerged as Muhammad Ali, the basketball star Lew Alcindor as Kareem Abdul Jabbar, and the beat poet LeRoi Jones as Imamu Amiri Baraka (ignoring for the moment that Islamic names reflected an identity imposed by an earlier slave-owning elite, the Arabs). Carmichael himself became Kwame Touré, after two African dictators of the sixties, Sekou Touré of Guinea and Du Bois’s failed Pan-African savior, Kwame Nkrumah.

4. “If you look at it, #Integrity in public governance is not a complex subject, "it is simply doing exactly what the rules say". You may be a smoker, abuse alcohol and patronize prostitutes, but if you are fully committed to complying with the laid down rules, you are Mr Integrity. However, if you live like Ghandi, talk about civil liberty like Martin Luther King Jr and preach altruism like Malcolm X and Kwame Nkrumah, but you publicly and consistently violate laid down rules, you'll still be seen in the shameful cast of Adolf Hitler

Philosophically and ideologically, he does not appear very deep. He is no Kwame Nkrumah

People may not recognized what you are doing today but the future generation will see and ask who did this?.... People who will be there at that time will boldly say"Shamala did this".Ask kwame nkrumah will tell you..

It is essential that socialism should include overriding regard tot the experience and the consciousness of a people, for if it does not do so, it will be serving an idea and not a people. It will generate a contradiction. It will become dogmatic. It will shed its materialist and realist basis. It will become fanaticism, an obscurantism, an alienator of human happiness.

When we talk of socialism in Africa, therefore, we really do intent to include as part of socialism an overriding regard to our actual material conditions, an overriding regard to our experience and our consciousness.

The history of a nation is, unfortunately, too easily written as the history of its dominant class. —KWAME NKRUMAH