Elijah Lokai > Elijah's Quotes

“We live in a country where our young ladies who have recently attained the age of puberty cannot afford sanitary pads, but our men and women in public offices have ipads which they do not even know how to use.”
― PLO Lumumba

“You do not respond to a mosquito bite with a hammer.”
― PLO Lumumba

“I believe that we have reached a stage in life in the economic development of Africa where moving forward is perilous, moving backwards is cowardice and standing still is suicidal but we must persevere because winners do not quit and quitter never win.”
― PLO Lumumba

“When I look at Africa many questions come to mind, many times I have asked myself what would happen if Dr Kwame Nkrumah and Patrice Lumumba were to rise up and see what is happening, many times I have asked myself what would happen if Nelson Madiba Mandela were to rise up and see what is happening, because what they will be confronted with is an Africa where the Democratic Republic of Congo is unsettled, there is a war going on there, but it's not on the front pages of our newspapers because we don't even control our newspapers and the media.”
― PLO Lumumba

“We are the third world not because the sun rises on the West and sets in the East but because we have engaged the reverse gear and we are moving with jet like speed in the wrong direction -we must change this by rolling up our sleeves and working for the growth of our country.”
― Patrick Loch Otieno Lumumba

“Third World is a state of the mind and until we change our attitude as Africans, if there is a fourth, fifth and even sixth world, we will be in it.”
― Patrick Loch Otieno Lumumba

“Our country must morally re-arm. We cannot run a country where virtue is vice and vice is virtue. We cannot live in a country where the looters of yester-years assume they have undergone a Pauline conversion because they are in opposition and oppose the Government of the day. Some of our richest men and women are to be found in politics and their creed is, thou shall reap what thou hath not sown.”
― PLO Lumumba

“Written words can also sing.”
― Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Dreams in a Time of War

“Our lives are a battlefield on which is fought a continuous war between the forces that are pledged to confirm our humanity and those determined to dismantle it; those who strive to build a protective wall around it, and those who wish to pull it down; those who seek to mould it and those committed to breaking it up; those who aim to open our eyes, to make us see the light and look to tomorrow [...] and those who wish to lull us into closing our eyes”
― Ngugi wa Thiong'o

“Why did Africa let Europe cart away millions of Africa's souls from the continent to the four corners of the wind? How could Europe lord it over a continent ten times its size? Why does needy Africa continue to let its wealth meet the needs of those outside its borders and then follow behind with hands outstretched for a loan of the very wealth it let go? How did we arrive at this, that the best leader is the one that knows how to beg for a share of what he has already given away at the price of a broken tool? Where is the future of Africa?”
― Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Wizard of the Crow

“The condition of women in a nation is the real measure of its progress.”
― Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Wizard of the Crow

“Our fathers fought bravely. But do you know the biggest weapon unleashed by the enemy against them? It was not the Maxim gun. It was division among them. Why? Because a people united in faith are stronger than the bomb”
― Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, A Grain of Wheat

“with me,it is 'better never than late”
― ngugi wa thiongo

“Belief in yourself is more important than endless worries of what others think of you. Value yourself and others will value you. Validation is best that comes from within.”
― Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Dreams in a Time of War

“If poverty was to be sold three cents today, i can't buy it.”
― Ngugi wa Thiong'o , I Will Marry When I Want

“Language, any language, has a dual character: it is both a means of communication and a carrier of culture”
― Ngũgĩ wa Thiongʾo