Famous Quotes & Sayings

Yaya Toure

When we play at the World Cup, any African will back any African team. Because we want to hear the different approach to African football. We want to hear that Africans can do well, and Africans do well.

Yaya Toure

I just had a normal African childhood; we played football a lot, but it was always in the street and always without shoes. Boots were very expensive, and when there are seven in your family, and you say you want to buy a pair, your father wants to kill you.

Giles Foden

I grew up in the African bush in Malawi, Tanzania and Uganda, which is my thing. I love the smell of the dust as you bump along in a Land-Rover. I go back there often.

We were very happy when a South African court, which had previously ruled against us, took another look and decided that this material was not obscene and allowed it into the country.

Yotam Ottolenghi

Chermoula is a potent North African spice paste that is ideal for smearing on your favourite vegetables for roasting.

Abraham Lincoln

Among the friends of Union, there is great diversity of sentiment and of policy in regard to slavery and the African race among us.

Constance Wu

Usually, I'll be auditioning for the third lead, and there will be Latina actresses, Indian actresses, African American actresses because it will be like, 'Let's check off this box. We have our lead white girl, and we need an ethnic slot.'

The piece has been danced on four continents by 15 ballet companies. It's a very strange compilation of Bach blended with traditional African songs and rhythms. They kind of bleed in and out of each other.

Chris Abani

African narratives in the West, they proliferate. I really don't care anymore. I'm more interested in the stories we tell about ourselves - how, as a writer, I find that African writers have always been the curators of our humanity on this continent.

Chris Abani

I read mostly Irish, African, Japanese, South American, and African writers. You can count on Scandinavian literature for a certain kind of darkness, a modern mythic style.

Chris Abani

There is no living African writer who has not had to, or will not have to, contend with Achebe's work. We are either resisting him - stylistically, politically, or culturally - or we are writing toward him.

Barack Obama

My parents shared not only an improbable love, they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation. They would give me an African name, Barack, or blessed, believing that in a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success.

Wole Soyinka

Some African leaders actually dare to suggest that democracy is a concept alien to traditional African society. This is one of the most impudent political blasphemies I can think of.

Wole Soyinka

Trading and religion have always been aligned together in the history of the world, and especially on the African continent.

Taye Diggs

The large ensemble cast and the fact that it was being shot in New York, combined with a lot of strong positive images as far as African Americans are concerned, really turned me on to The Best Man.

Anna Deavere Smith

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

Nelson Mandela

From the beginning, Mandela and Tambo was besieged with clients. We were not the only African lawyers in South Africa, but we were the only firm of African lawyers. For Africans, we were the firm of first choice and last resort.

Nelson Mandela

At the outset, I want to say that the suggestion that the struggle in South Africa is under the influence of foreigners or communists is wholly incorrect. I have done whatever I did because of my experience in South Africa and my own proudly felt African background, and not because of what any outsider might have said.

Nelson Mandela

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.

Vivica A. Fox

I wish, to be honest with you, for African American films that we could get a few more theaters. They only open them in 1500 to 2000 for an opening weekend, and how do you expect us to compete. How can we go to certain box office levels if they don't give us more theaters?

Vivica A. Fox

When you do a film, you know you're shooting for 6 or 9 weeks, you've got your cast and crew. Overall, no one can just pull the plug and say, 'This isn't working.' There's just no security on television, especially for African Americans. It's a tough market.

Loretta Lynch

Housing programs designed to help young families and senior citizens purchase homes should be available to people of all races, including African Americans.

Naya Rivera

I am half Puerto Rican, a quarter German and a quarter black. That was always a big issue for me - being mixed race - because casting directors tended to be very like, 'OK, are you Hispanic for this role?' 'Or is she going to be African American?'

Dontrelle Willis

We definitely are few, but we're a proud few, ... Everybody's been rooting for me since I was 15. It's a camaraderie, not just pitchers but African American players in general.

Lee Ritenour

My son Wesley has just turned 13. He was 12 during the recording of this record and he is quite a drummer already and has been studying drums since he was four, but he's also very interested in African percussion and studies percussion.

Matt Kemp

I'm always telling people baseball needs to be more prominent in the African American community. What a better way to do so, going on these TV shows and appearing on the cover of this or that. Now kids can see how baseball can change your life. Frank Thomas did that for me.

Niecy Nash

When I was growing up, Brandy was TV star, reality star, a pop star, a Cover girl, Grammy winner, had her own Brandy doll, and was the first African American to play Disney princess Cinderella. Most importantly, she is a survivor. Many only judge and remember a person's most recent failure.

Meles Zenawi

I would love to be the African leader that steps down, that overthrows this idea of a Big Man ruler. I don't want to stay in office forever.

Meles Zenawi

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.

Janelle Monae

We don't all have to take the same coordinates to get to the same destination. Being a young African American female artist, I want to open doors for young black girls.

LZ Granderson

The Dr. King holiday is not just for black people, African-Americans or people of African descent.

Barbara Stocking

Today's announcement will make a real difference to millions of poor people. On the ground it will mean thousands of people get treatment for the first time in their lives. Zambia will need continued support to recruit new staff but this is a massive leap in the right direction. We now need other African countries to follow suit.

Solomon Ortiz

When no other schools in the Southeastern Conference or the former Southwestern Conference would award them athletic scholarships, African Americans had been recruited by and playing for Texas Western since the 1950s.