Thomas Sankara Quotes

Comrades, there is no true social revolution without the liberation of women. May my eyes never see and my feet never take me to a society where half the people are held in silence. I hear the roar of women’s silence. I sense the rumble of their storm and feel the fury of their revolt.

he who feeds you, controls you

Imperialism is a system of exploitation that occurs not only in the brutal form of those who come with guns to conquer territory. Imperialism often occurs in more subtle forms, a loan, food aid, blackmail . We are fighting this system that allows a handful of men on Earth to rule all of humanity.

I can hear the roar of women's silence

The only difference between the woman who sells her body through prostitution and she who sells herself in marriage is the price and duration of the contract.

Our revolution is not a public-speaking tournament. Our revolution is not a battle of fine phrases. Our revolution is not simply for spouting slogans that are no more than signals used by manipulators trying to use them as catchwords, as codewords, as a foil for their own display. Our revolution is, and should continue to be, the collective effort of revolutionaries to transform reality, to improve the concrete situation of the masses of our country.

Il faut choisir entre le champagne pour quelques-uns ou l'eau potable pour tous.

As revolutionaries, we don't have the right to say we are tired of explaining. We must never stop explaining. We know that when the people understand, they cannot help but follow us.

The condition of women is therefore at the heart of the question of humanity itself, here, there, and everywhere.

By changing the social order that oppresses women, the revolution creates the conditions for their genuine emancipation.

The specific character of [women's] oppression cannot be explained away by equating different situations through superficial and childish simplifications[:] It is true that both the woman and the male worker are condemned to silence by their exploitation. But under the current system, the worker's wife is also condemned to silence by her worker-husband. In other words, in addition to the class exploitation common to both of them, women must confront a particular set of relations that exist between them and men, relations of conflict and violence that use physical differences as their pretext.

You cannot carry out fundamental change without a certain amount of madness. In this case, it comes from nonconformity, the courage to turn your back on the old formulas, the courage to invent the future. Besides, it took the madmen of yesterday for us to be able to act with extreme clarity today. I want to be one of those madmen.

The patriarchal family made its appearance, founded on the sole and personal property of the father, who had become head of the family. Within this family the woman was oppressed.

Humankind does not submit passively to the power of nature. It takes control over this power. This process is not an internal or subjective one. It takes place objectively in practice, once women cease to be viewed as mere sexual beings, once we look beyond their biological functions and become conscious of their weight as an active social force. What's more, woman's consciousness of herself is not only a product of her sexuality. It reflects her position as determined by the economic structure of society, which in turn expresses the level reached by humankind in technological development and the relations between classes. The importance of dialectical materialism lies in going beyond the inherent limits of biology, rejecting simplistic theories about our being slaves to the nature of our species, and, instead, placing facts in their social and economic context.

We have no need of a feminized apparatus to bureaucratically manage women's lives or to issue sporadic statements about women's lives by smooth-talking functionaries. What we need are women who will fight because they know that without a fight the old order will not be destroyed and no new order will be built. We are not looking to organize what exists but to definitively destroy and replace it.

Nous ne parlons pas de l'émancipation des femmes par charité, mais parce que pour nous c'est une base nécessaire pour le triomphe de notre révolution".

In every male languishes the soul of a feudal lord, a male chauvinist, which must be destroyed.

We must dare to invent the future.

Per ottenere un cambiamento radicale bisogna avere il coraggio d’inventare l’avvenire. Noi dobbiamo osare inventare l’avvenire.

Conceiving a development project without women's participation is like using only four fingers when we have ten.

This struggle to defend the trees and forests is above all a struggle against imperialism. Imperialism is the arsonist setting fire to our forests and our savannas

Thomas Sankara renamed the country Burkina Faso—the Land of Incorruptible People—and wrote the national anthem.

The woman leads a twofold existence indeed, the depth of her social ostracism being equally only by her stoic endurance. To live in harmony with the society of man, to conform with men's demands, she resigns herself to a self-effacement that is demeaning, she sacrifices herself.

Another problem doubtlessly lies in the feudal, reactionary, and passive attitude of many men who by their behavior continue to hold things back. They have no intention of jeopardizing the total control they have over women, either at home or in society in general. In the battle to build a new society, which is a revolutionary battle, the conduct of these men places them on the side of reaction and counterrevolution. For the revolution cannot triumph without the genuine emancipation of women.

Un militaire sans formation politique n'est qu'un criminel en puissance

Was it understood that the position of women in society means the condition of 52 percent of the Burkinabe population? Was it understood that this condition was the product of social, political, and economic structures, and of prevailing backward conceptions? And that the transformation of this position therefore could not be accomplished by a single ministry, even one led by a woman?

Those who come with wheat, millet, corn or milk, they are not helping us. Those who really want to help us can give us ploughs, tractors, fertilizers, insecticides, watering cans, drills and dams. That is how we would define food aid.

[N]othing whole, nothing definitive or lasting can be accomplished in our country as long as a crucial part of ourselves is kept in this condition of subjugation—a condition imposed over the course of centuries by various systems of exploitation.

Den som livnär dig, kontrollerar dig. Thomas Sankara

...Those who led us to indebtedness gambled as if in a casino. As long as they had gains, there was no debate. But now that they suffer losses, they demand repayment. And we talk about crisis. No, Mister President, they played, they lost, that’s the rule of the game, and life goes on. We cannot repay because we don’t have any means to do so. We cannot pay because we are not responsible for this debt. We cannot repay but the others owe us what the greatest wealth could never repay, that is blood debt. Our blood had flowed. We hear about the Marshall Plan that rebuilt Europe’s economy. But we never hear about the African plan which allowed Europe to face Hitlerian hordes when their economies and their stability were at stake. Who saved Europe? Africa. It is rarely mentioned, to such a point that we cannot be the accomplices of that thankless silence. If others cannot sing our praises, at least we must say that our fathers had been courageous and that our troops had saved Europe and set the world free from Nazism.

We cannot repay but the others owe us what the greatest wealth could never repay, that is blood debt. Our blood had flowed. We hear about the Marshall Plan that rebuilt Europe’s economy. But we never hear about the African plan which allowed Europe to face Hitlerian hordes when their economies and their stability were at stake. Who saved Europe? Africa. It is rarely mentioned, to such a point that we cannot be the accomplices of that thankless silence. If others cannot sing our praises, at least we must say that our fathers had been courageous and that our troops had saved Europe and set the world free from Nazism.

This is why we say the petty bourgeoisie is constantly torn between two interests. It has two books. On the one hand Karl Marx's Capital, on the other a checkbook. It wavers: Che Guevara or Onassis? They have to choose.

At the top of the list are the problems of - illiteracy and low political consciousness-both of which are intensified by the inordinate influence that reactionary forces exert in backward societies like ours. We must work with perseverance to overcome these two main obstacles. Because as long as women don't have a clear appreciation of the just nature of the political battle to be fought and don't see clearly how to take it forward, we can easily stop making headway and eventually slip backward.

Though the August revolution has undoubtedly done much for the emancipation of women, this is still far from adequate. Much remains for us to do. To better appreciate what remains to be done, we must be more aware of the difficulties still to be overcome. There are many obstacles and difficulties. At the top of the list are the problems of - illiteracy and low political consciousness-both of which are intensified by the inordinate influence that reactionary forces exert in backward societies like ours. We must work with perseverance to overcome these two main obstacles. Because as long as women don't have a clear appreciation of the just nature of the political battle to be fought and don't see clearly how to take it forward, we can easily stop making headway and eventually slip backward.

Comrades, the Women's Union of Burkina is your combat weapon. It belongs to you. Sharpen it again and again so that its blade will cut more deeply, bringing you ever-greater victories.

Comrade revolutionaries, we should see to it that marriage is a choice that adds something positive, and not some kind of lottery where we know what the ticket costs us, but have no idea what we will end up winning. Human feelings are too noble to be subject to such games.