In this post, I’ve shared some of my favorite and most impactful Quotes by Kwame Nkrumah.
Kwame Nkrumah was born on September 21, 1909, and died on April 27, 1972. Nkurumah was a politician, political theorist, and revolutionary from Ghana. He was Ghana’s first Prime Minister and President, having led the Gold Coast to independence from British Rule in 1957.
Kwame Nkurumah was a prominent advocate of Pan-Africanism; he was a founding member of the Organization of African Unity and received the Soviet Union’s Lenin Peace Prize in 1962.
Nkrumah returned to the Gold Coast to begin his political career as an advocate of national independence after spending 12 years abroad pursuing further education, developing his political ideology, and organizing with fellow diasporic pan-Africanists. He founded the Convention People’s Party, which quickly rose to prominence because of its extraordinary appeal to the average voter. He was elected Prime Minister in 1952 and remained in office until Ghana gained independence from Britain in 1957. In 1960 the people of Ghana accepted a new constitution and appointed Kwame Nkrumah President .
Nkrumah’s regime was both socialist and nationalist. It promoted national economic and energy initiatives, built a solid national education system, and fostered a pan-Africanist culture. During the decolonization period, Ghana took a prominent position in African foreign affairs under Nkrumah.
In February 1966, when Nkrumah was on an official visit to North Vietnam and China, his administration was toppled in a violent coup orchestrated by the national military and police forces. Nkrumah never returned to Ghana and lived in exile in Conakry, Guinea, although he continued to advocate for his vision of African unity.
Faces Of Africa- Kwame Nkrumah ( Video Embed from YouTube)
20 Quotes by Kwame Nkrumah
1. “I am not African because I was born in Africa but because Africa was born in me.”
2. “If we are to achieve revolutionary Socialism, then we must avoid any suggestion that will imply that there is any separation between the Socialist world and a ‘Third World.”
3. “Action without thought is empty. Thought without action is blind.”
4. “If by their fruits we shall know them, they must first grow the fruits.”
5. “We prefer self-government with danger to servitude in tranquility.”
6. “We face neither East nor West; We face forward.”
7. “Capitalism is a development by refinement from feudalism, just as feudalism is development by refinement from slavery. Capitalism is but the gentlemen’s method of slavery.”
8. “Any meaningful humanism must begin from egalitarianism and must lead to objectively chosen policies for safeguarding and sustaining egalitarianism.”
9. “The forces that unite us are intrinsic and greater than the superimposed influences that keep us apart.”
10. “All the fair brave words spoken about freedom that had been broadcast to the four corners of the earth took seed and grew where they had not been intended.”
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11. “Practice without thought is blind. Thought without practice is empty.”
12. “Those who judge us merely by the heights we have achieved would do well to remember the depths from which we started.”
13. “The forces that unite us are intrinsic and greater than the superimposed influences that keep us apart.”
14. “I am in the knowledge that death can never extinguish the torch which I have lit in Ghana and Africa. Long after I am dead and gone, the light will continue to burn and be borne aloft, giving light and guidance to all people.”
15. “Africa is one continent, one people, and one nation. The notion that in order to have a nation it is necessary for there to be a common language, a common territory and common culture has failed to stand the test of time or the scrutiny of scientific definition of objective reality.”
16. “Freedom is not something that one people can bestow on another as a gift. Thy claim it as their own and none can keep it from them.”
17. “Never before in history has such a sweeping fervor for freedom expressed itself in great mass movements which are driving down the bastions of empire. This wind of change blowing through Africa, as I have said before, is no ordinary wind. It is a raging hurricane against which the old order cannot stand.”
18. “The result of neo-colonialism is that foreign capital is used for the exploitation rather than for the development of the less developed parts of the world. Investment, under neo-colonialism, increases, rather than decreases, the gap between the rich and the poor countries of the world.”
19. “For this end Africa needs a new type of citizen, a dedicated, modest, honest and informed man. A man submerges self in service to the nation and mankind. A man who abhors greed and detests vanity. A new type of man whose humility is his strength and whose integrity is his greatness”
20. “The forces that unite us are intrinsic and greater than the superimposed influences that keep us apart.”
My favorite quote by Kwame Nkrumah, “Those who judge us merely by the heights we have achieved would do well to remember the depths from which we started.” Let me know yours in the comments below.