Marimba Ani > Quotes

“Our cultural roots are the most ancient in the world. The spiritual concepts of our Ancestors gave birth to religious thought African people believe in the oneness of the African family through sacred time, which unites the past, the present and the future. Our Ancestors live with us.”
― Marimba Ani

“Rob the universe of its richness, deny the significance of the symbolic, simplify the phenomena until it becomes a mere object, and you have knowable quantity”
― Marimba Ani, Yurugu - An African-Centered Critique of European Cultural Thought and Behavior by Marimba Ani Paperback

“Universal is another of those words that has been used to hold the enemy in our brains”
― Marimba Ani, Yurugu: An African-Centered Critique of European Cultural Thought and Behavior

“The European psyche needs the illusion of a rationally ordered universe in which everything can be known”
― Marimba Ani, Yurugu - An African-Centered Critique of European Cultural Thought and Behavior by Marimba Ani Paperback

“How can Freud be credited with the "discovery" of the unconscious when the unconscious life had been so important to people for millennia before his existence?”
― Marimba Ani, Yurugu: An African-Centered Critique of European Cultural Thought and Behavior

“European culture creates a being who thrives on competition and, therefore, on individual and distinct achievement. Because there is not a natural regard for personal worth born from and supported by the culture -because a person's existence as a member of the group does not in itself mean much- the individual strives to be "better than", to stand apart from others in his craving for recognition.”
― Marimba Ani, Yurugu