Top 1200 African Culture Quotes & Sayings

My name, Solange, means 'Angel of the sun,' and I'm completely enamored of my African history. The culture is so expressive.

I don't believe in the clash of cultures. The culture is one. The culture is a ring off the same chain. Picasso was very much influenced by the African arts, and he influenced a whole other generation of artists. So everything influences everything.

African-Americans are not a monolithic group. So, we tend to talk about the black community, the black culture, the African-American television viewing audience, but there are just as many facets of us as there are other cultures.

Jamestown changed the world in many ways, but perhaps it shaped our nation most profoundly the day Africans arrived. I can't think of a more relevant place to talk about the issues facing our community today than the place where African culture became American culture.

Perhaps it is time to debate culture. The common story is that in 'real' African culture, before it was tainted by the West, gender roles were rigid and women were contentedly oppressed.

Flamenco is connected with so many types of music. It has Jewish culture inside, Arabian culture inside, Russian culture inside, Spanish culture inside. It's linked to African music too, because African music has the 'amalgama' rhythms you can find in flamenco. You can find everything in flamenco. That's why it's so beautiful.

Jesse Jackson's living depends on the maintenance of an African-American victim culture

I'd like to state that Spike Lee is not saying that African American culture is just for black people alone to enjoy and cherish. Culture is for everybody.

People take pride in being Irish-American and Italian-American. They have a particular culture that infuses the whole culture and makes it richer and more interesting. I think if we can expand that attitude to embrace African-Americans and Latino-Americans and Asian-Americans, then we will be in a position where all our kids can feel comfortable with the worlds they are coming out of, knowing they are part of something larger.

The southward advance of native African farmers with Central African crops halted in Natal, beyond which Central African crops couldn't grow - with enormous consequences for the recent history of South Africa.

I loved the African-American culture, but racism was still a big problem and white America was exactly what I didn't love.

I was in Paris last year, where there's a great appreciation of many different aspects of African culture and of black culture. The music... the art... whatever... And I kind of went with that.

Denys Cowan and Dwayne Turner's visions of Wakanda as an ersatz African Epcot Center opened my eyes to the unexploited possibilities; these men, both of whom are African American, together with writer Peter B. Gillis, created an African Asgard of sorts, and I just went, 'Oh, my.'

We do not have a South African as a member of the African Commission. The President of the Commission comes from Mali, the Deputy comes from Rwanda and then we have got all these other members, ordinary commissioners. There is no South African there. And the reason, again, for that is not because we didn't have South Africans who are competent.

There is a tendency just to talk about foreign investors. Over 80 per cent of new investment in the South African economy is South African and therefore the engagement of the South African investor is also a critical part of this process.

People ask me if I miss the States. I miss African Americans. But not the U.S. government or all the things they put me through. I miss African American culture, our speech, dance and cooking.

I love my own culture. I love my African-American culture very deeply, and I know it deserves to be honored. You have to be aware that people are suffering unjustly, and given our own history we have a duty to stand for the people who are being treated like our parents and grandparents and children were treated.

From politics and business to music and food to culture, African-Americans have helped to shape our state's colourful past and its future.

All across this world, especially within the African diaspora, we feel like there is a constant devaluing of our culture and our livelihood.

After Nigeria, we are the second biggest black African nation. We are the headquarters of the African Union. We are the only African country that has never been colonized. This is perhaps the last surviving African civilization.

I am very proud to be African. I want to defend African people, and I want to show to the world that African players can be as good as the Europeans and South Americans.

I've got to where am in life not because of something I brought to the world but through something I found - the wealth of African culture.

'Who Fears Death' addresses the push and pull in African culture that powerful women face when their culture has certain duties and beliefs that can stifle them.

So in Jamaica it is the aim of everybody to talk English, act English and look English. And that last specification is where the greatest difficulties arise. It is not so difficult to put a coat of European culture over African culture, but it is next to impossible to lay a European face over an African face in the same generation.

One of the biggest dishes in Sicily is couscous, and there's always been a North African influence on Italian culture, culinary culture there.

One of the things that made the Black Muslim movement grow was its emphasis upon things African. This was the secret to the growth of the Black Muslim movement. African blood, African origin, African culture, African ties. And you'd be surprised - we discovered that deep within the subconscious of the black man in this country, he is still more African than he is American.

Every culture to me - be it Asian, African, be it whatever - is a source of reference. I don't think I'm 'stealing' it or anything.

In American culture at large, but especially in African American culture, it's a sign of weakness to ask for help.

I think there's beauty in repetition. And that's part of my culture and African culture as well: repeated things, mantra. It's spiritual, it's meditation, it's Buddhism, it's praying, it's all these things.

I've got to where I am in life not because of something I brought to the world but through something I found - the wealth of African culture.

Perhaps it is time to debate culture. The common story is that in "real" African culture, before it was tainted by the west, gender roles were rigid and women were contentedly oppressed.

We have to realize our black heritage in order to give us strength to move on and progress. But as far as returning to the old African culture, it's unnecessary and it's not advantageous in many respects. We believe that culture itself will not liberate us. We're going to need some stronger stuff.

Any staffing changes that disproportionately cut the number of African Americans at CNN - intentionally or otherwise - are an affront to the African American journalism community and to the African American community as a whole.

To make an absolutely gross generalization, I think a lot of people feel like if you're mixed, more often than not you're quote unquote white. So if you're mixed, you embrace the mainstream culture more than the African-American culture.

Culture is about humanizing people. You look at the African-American civil rights movement, you look at the LGBT rights movement - the culture changed before the politics did.

There has been a struggle to reclaim the African self. That struggle has been on the part of a minority of dedicated African-Americans who never gave up our African identity at no time during our stay here.

When people try to take your culture away from you, your essence of your culture becomes stronger. It's like even in Africa. When you see African-Americans, they're stronger because of what they've gone through. It's even subliminal; I think it becomes in their genes.

When I got near teen age, I was so happy with my friends and the African American culture that I couldn't imagine not being part of it.

Writing has always been a serious business for me. I felt it was a moral obligation. A major concern of the time was the absence of the African voice. Being part of that dialogue meant not only sitting at the table but effectively telling the African story from an African perspective - in full earshot of the world.

Sometimes you can't fight change, because you're a part of it, and I feel that in the context of these films that are happening now, there is a kind of change coming in terms of how history is represented on film, and the African, and the African-American and British African experience.

To live your life well, and have respect for what came before or after - there's a strong respect for that in African culture.

African society and culture varies much more than European society but it's just considered 'Africa' as if they are all the same.

That argument doesn’t make any sense to me. So we want to advance as a society and as a culture, but, say, if something happens to an African-American, we immediately come to his defense? Yet you want to talk about how far we’ve progressed as a society? Well, if we’ve progressed as a society, then you don’t jump to somebody’s defense just because they’re African-American. You sit and you listen to the facts just like you would in any other situation, right? So I won’t assert myself.

What example do you have of anything like the Pyramids outside of Africa? You have them in Mexico, but that can be traced to early African migration. So the African created mound culture.

For the first time since I began acting, I feel that I've found my place in the world, that there's something out of my own culture which i can express and perhaps help others preserve..i have found out now that the African natives had a definite culture a long way beyond the culture of the Stone age...an integrated thing, which is still unspoiled by western influences...I think the Americans will be amazed to find how many of the modern dance steps are relics of African heritage.

The treatment of African and African American culture in our education was no different from their treatment in Tarzan movies.

I'm African-American by my culture, not by my color. Race does not exist.

African American culture is American culture.

Since the 1960s, mainstream media has searched out and co-opted the most authentic things it could find in youth culture, whether that was psychedelic culture, anti-war culture, blue jeans culture. Eventually heavy metal culture, rap culture, electronica - they'll look for it and then market it back to kids at the mall.

I just want to make sure that I'm taking roles that are positive, real, honest reflections of African-Americans because I do think the media can put African-American women in the background. Then, unfortunately, what happens is, subconsciously, our culture begins to assess that as reality.

The things that inform student culture are created and controlled by the unseen culture, the sociological aspects of our climbing culture, our 'me' generation, our yuppie culture, our SUVs, or, you know, shopping culture, our war culture.

...culture is useless unless it is constantly challenged by counter culture. People create culture; culture creates people. It is a two-way street. When people hide behind a culture, you know that's a dead culture.

The [Kwanzaa] holiday, then will of necessity, be engaged as an ancient and living cultural tradition which reflects the best of African thought and practice in its reaffirmation of the dignity of the human person in community and culture, the well-being of family and community, the integrity of the environment and our kinship with it, and the rich resource and meaning of a people's culture.

The education I received was a British education, in which British ideas, British culture, British institutions, were automatically assumed to be superior. There was no such thing as African culture.

Many teachers of the Sixties generation said "We will steal your children", and they did. A significant part of America has converted to the ideas of the 1960s - hedonism, self-indulgence and consumerism. For half of all Americans today, the Woodstock culture of the Sixties is the culture they grew up with - their traditional culture. For them, Judeo-Christian culture is outside the mainstream now. The counter-culture has become the dominant culture, and the former culture a dissident culture - something that is far out, and 'extreme'.

It's obvious that the rest of the world loves high African culture - African culture, period.

It seemed [there are] musical nodes on the planet where cultures meet and mix, sometimes as a result of unfortunate circumstances, like slavery or something else, in places like New Orleans and Havana and Brazil. And those are places where the European culture and indigenous culture and African culture all met and lived together, and some new kind of culture and especially music came out of that.

We know that the African regimes, many African regimes have failed their people and many Africans want regime change, and there are a lot of African leaders who make promises but don't carry them out. I mean, the progress - I mean, it is noble for the rich countries to help Africa, but then the question is: What are African leaders themselves doing to help their own people?

In my opinion, it would be a lot better for the culture - meaning the culture of America - if there was more diversity in terms of storyline. In terms of the kind of content that you see about Americans of African descent on the screen.

It is my hope that as we commemorate Black History Month in the future, we will continue to celebrate the many achievements and rich culture of African-Americans.