Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o Quotes

As long as he did not know the truth, he could interpret the story in the only way that gave him hope: the coming of black rule would not mean, could never mean the end of white power.

Our people, think: I, Wangarĩ, a Kenyan by birth—how can I be a vagrant in my own country as if I were a foreigner?"

African countries, as colonies and even today as neo-colonies, came to be defined and to define themselves in terms of the languages of Europe: English-speaking, French-speaking or Portuguese-speaking African countries.

This country, our country, is pregnant. What it will give birth to, only God knows...Imagine! the children of us workers are fated to stay out in the sun, thirsty, hungry, naked, gazing at fruit ripening on trees which they can't pick even to quieten a demanding belly! Fated to see food steaming in the pantry, but unable to dip a calabash in to the pot to scoop out even a tiny portion! Fated to lie awake all night telling each another stories about tears and sorrow, asking one another to guess the same riddle day after day: 'Oh, for a piece of one of those!'

Look, Sister,You know I want the boy to grow in the Lord.

Written words can also sing.

Who has told you that prophesy is yours alone, to keep to yourself? Why are you furnishing yourself with empty excuses? If you do that, you will never be free of tears and pleading cries."

If in these essays I criticise the Afro-European (or Euroafrican) choice of our linguistic praxis, it is not to take away from the talent and the genius of those who have written in English, French or Portuguese. On the contrary I am lamenting a neo-colonial situation which has meant the European bourgeoisie once again stealing our talents and geniuses as they have stolen our economies. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Europe stole art treasures from Africa to decorate their houses and museums; in the twentieth century Europe is stealing the treasures of the mind to enrich their languages and cultures. Africa needs back its economy, its politics, its culture, its languages and all its patriotic writers.”

for I had reached a point in my life when I came to view words differently. A closer look at language could reveal the secret of life.

Then change the world. Give it a soul.

The man who had suffered so much had further revealed his greatness in modesty. By refusing to lead, Mugo had become a legendary hero.

In a flash, I was convinced that the growth of the British Empire was the development of a great moral idea: it means, it must surely lead to the creation of one British nation, embracing all peoples of all colors and creeds, based on the just proposition that all men were created equal.

Different! Different! Puu! They are all alike. Those coated with the white clay of the white man’s ways are the worst. They have nothing inside.

The whiteman told of another country beyond the sea where a powerful woman sat on a throne while men and women danced under the shadow of her authority and benevolence. She was ready to spread the shadow to cover the [Gikuyu]. They laughed at this eccentric man whose skin had been so scalded that the black outside had peeled off.

I shall look at the African realities as they are affected by the great struggle between the two mutually opposed forces in Africa today: an imperialist tradition on one hand, and a resistance tradition on the other. The imperialist tradition in Africa is today maintained by the international bourgeoisie using the multinational and of course the flag-waving native ruling classes. [...]The resistance tradition is being carried out by the working people (the peasantry and the proletariat) aided by patriotic students, intellectuals (academic and non-academic), soldiers and other progressive elements of the petty middle class.”