Thomas Sankara Quotes

So let us draw closer to Che. Let us draw closer to him, but not as we would a god, not as we would the idea — this image placed over and above men — but rather with the feeling that we are moving toward a brother who speaks to us and to whom we can speak as well. We must see to it that other revolutionaries draw inspiration from Che's spirit, that they too become internationalists, that they too, together with other men, know how to build faith — faith in the struggle to change things — to combat imperialism and capitalism.

We must recognize today that it is normal for the wealthiest to be the greatest thieves. When a poor man steals it is merely a theft, a petty crime -- it is solely about survival and necessity. The rich are the ones who steal from the treasury, customs duties, and who exploit the people.

When the people stand up, imperialism trembles.

I speak on behalf of the child, the child of the poor man, who is hungry and who furtively eyes the wealth piled up in the rich man's shop, a shop that is protected by a thick window, a window which is defended by an impassable grille, the grille guarded by a policeman in a helmet with gloves and a bludgeon, the policeman placed there by the father of another child, who comes there to serve himself or rather to be served because these are the guarantees of capitalistic representativeness and norms of the system.

In slave society, the male slave was looked upon as an animal, a means of production of goods and services. The woman, whatever her social rank, was crushed not only within her own class, but by other classes too. This was the case even for women who belonged tothe exploiting classes. In feudal society, women were kept in a state of absolute dependence on men, justified with reference to women's supposed physical and psychological weakness. Often seen as a defiled object, a primary agent of indiscretion, women, with a few rare exceptions, were kept out of places of worship. In capitalist society, the woman, already morally and socially persecuted, is also subjugated economically. Kept by the man if she does not work, she is still a slave when she works herself to death. We will never be able to paint an adequate picture of the misery women suffer, nor show too strongly that women share the misery of proletarians as a whole.

I would like to leave behind me the conviction that if we maintain a certain amount of caution and organization we deserve victory. ... 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. 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. ... We must dare to invent the future.

Capitalism is the arsonist of our forests.

While I was in Moscow, while I was in the Soviet Union, they made us visit many historical places, many museums but also the "city of stars" [Star City], where the Soviets train their cosmonauts. They showed us the spaceships, I confess it's impressive. Soyuz, Saliut, Mir, etc... They know a lot of things. They no longer speak to the Earth, they already speak to the Moon. Then, as usual, they asked me to sign the golden book. I signed it, of course! They asked us to go and admire this and that. We admired, of course! They asked us to bow before the statue of Yuri Gagarin. We have bowed. Obviously! And with that they considered the visit over. No, I told them, it's not all comrades yet, wait! Everything is fine, we are happy. We congratulate you, it is scientific progress. And when all this is at the service of the peoples, it will be truly wonderful. But I would like to ask you one thing... Two places. It is necessary that you have two places to form the Burkinabè. We also want to go to the Moon... [laughter and applause] We want to go up there! Cooperation must therefore begin. And we mean it seriously. We want to send people to the Moon. So there will be the Americans, there will be the Russians, some other countries... But there will also be Burkina [Faso]...

The revolutions that take place around the world are not all alike. Each revolution has its own originality, which distinguishes it from the others. Our revolution, the August revolution, is no exception. It takes into account the special features of our country, its level of development, and its subjugation by the world imperialist capitalist system. Our revolution is a revolution that is unfolding in a backward, agricultural country where the weight of tradition and ideology emanating from a feudal-type social organization weighs very heavily on the popular masses. It is a revolution in a country that, because of the oppression and exploitation of our people by imperialism, has evolved from a colony into a neocolony. It is a revolution occurring in a country still lacking an organized working class, conscious of its historic mission, and therefore not possessing any tradition of revolutionary struggle. It is a revolution taking place in one of the continent's small countries, at a time when the revolutionary movement on the international level is increasingly coming apart and there is no visible hope of seeing forged a homogenous bloc capable of encouraging and giving practical support to nascent revolutionary movements. All these historical, geographic, and sociological circumstances stamp our revolution with a certain, specific imprint.

We want to get our army involved with the people in productive work and remind it constantly that, without patriotic training, a soldier is only a criminal with power.

The Nonaligned Movement also signifies our struggle for development. The terrible problem of the debt is riding roughshod over our economies. Each day, under threat from our creditors, we have looked to the Nonaligned Movement in vain. So each one of us has tried to ease his plight in his own way. Some talk about paying back the debt but plead for a moratorium; others decide to declare a unilateral moratorium; yet others judge that the debt is unpayable. In fact, we are repaying everything just as the capitalists wish, because we are disunited.

We wish to enjoy the inheritance of all the revolutions of the world, all the liberation struggles of the third-world peoples. We are trying to learn from the great upheavals that have transformed the world. We have drawn the lessons of the American revolution, the lessons of its victory against colonial domination, and the consequences of that victory. We endorse the doctrine of non-interference by Europeans in American affairs and non-interference by Americans in European affairs. In 1823, Monroe said "America for the Americans". We would say "Africa for the Africans; Burkina Faso for the Burkinabe". The French revolution of 1789, which disrupted the foundations of absolutism, has taught us the rights of man linked to the rights of peoples to freedom. The great revolution of October 1917 transformed the world and made possible the victory of the proletariat, shook the foundations of capitalism and made possible the dreams of justice of the French Commune.

The revolution and women’s liberation go together. We do not talk of women’s emancipation as an act of charity or out of a surge of human compassion. It is a basic necessity for the revolution to triumph.

We must choose between champagne for a few or drinking water for all.

Humankind first knew slavery with the advent of private property. Man, master of his slaves and of the land, became in addition the woman's master. This was the historic defeat of the female sex. It came about with the upheaval in the division of labor and as a result of new modes of production and a revolution in the means of production. In this way, paternal right replaced maternal right. Property was now handed down from father to son, rather than as before from the woman to her clan. 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. Reigning supreme, the man satisfied his sexual whims by mating with his slaves or courtesans. Women became his booty, his conquest in trade. He profited from their labor power and took his fill from the myriad of pleasures they afforded him. For their part, as soon as the masters gave them the chance, women took revenge in infidelity. Thus adultery became the natural counterpart to marriage. It was the woman's only form of self-defense against the domestic slavery to which she was subjected. Her social oppression was a direct reflection of her economic oppression. Given this cycle of violence, inequality can be done away with only by establishing a new society, where men and women will enjoy equal rights, resulting from an upheaval in the means of production and in all social relations. Thus, the status of women will improve only with the elimination of the system that exploits them. In fact, throughout the ages and wherever the patriarchy has triumphed, there has been a close parallel between class exploitation and women's inferior status. Of course, there were brighter periods where women, priestesses or female warriors, broke out of their oppressive chains. But the essential features of her subjugation have survived and been consolidated, both in everyday activity and in intellectual and moral repression. Her status overturned by private property, banished from her very self, relegated to the role of child raiser and servant, written out of history by philosophy (Aristotle, Pythagoras, and others) and the most entrenched religions, stripped of all worth by mythology, woman shared the lot of a slave, who in slave society was nothing more than a beast of burden with a human face. So it is not surprising that in its phase of conquest the capitalist system, for which human beings are just so many numbers, should be the economic system that has exploited women the most brazenly and with the most sophistication. So, we are told, manufacturers in those days employed only women on their mechanized looms. They gave preference to women who were married and, among them, to those with a family at home to support. These women paid greater attention to their work than single women and were more docile, having no choice but to work to the point of exhaustion to earn the barest subsistence for their families. So we can see how women's particular attributes are turned against her, and all the most moral and delicate qualities of her nature become the means by which she is subjugated. Her tenderness, her love for her family, the meticulous care she takes with her work — all this is used against her, even as she guards herself against any weaknesses she might have.