Sign in with your pod

Famous quotes

Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,269 quotes Who coined it · How we decide

EnglishItalianoPolskiעבריתFrançaisPortuguêsفارسیEspañol中文РусскийDeutschالعربيةहिन्दी日本語ΕλληνικάLatina

Amílcar Cabral

13 quotes

• “In combating racism we do not make progress if we combat the people themselves. We have to combat the causes of racism. If a bandit comes to my house and I have a gun, I cannot shoot the shadow of the bandit; I have to shoot the bandit. Many people lose energy and effort, and make sacrifices combating shadows. We have to combat the material reality that produces the shadow. If we cannot change the light that is one cause of the shadow, we can at least change the body. It is important to avoid confusion between the shadow and the body that projects the shadow.”

  Amílcar Cabral (1924–1973) first seen 1972 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: talk in New York City (October 20, 1972), collected in Return to the Source: Selected Texts

• “We Africans, having rejected the idea of begging for freedom, which was contrary to our dignity and our sacred right to freedom and independence, reaffirmed our steadfast decision to end colonial domination of our country, no matter what the sacrifices involved, and to conquer for ourselves the opportunity to achieve in peace our own progress and happiness.”

  Amílcar Cabral (1924–1973) first seen 1972 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: from speech before the United Nations (October 16, 1972). English language translation collected in Return to the Source: Selected Texts

• “A people who free themselves from foreign domination will not be culturally free unless, without underestimating the importance of positive contributions from the oppressor’s culture and other cultures, they return to the upwards paths of their own culture. The latter is nourished by the living reality of the environment and rejects harmful influences as much as any kind of subjection to foreign cultures. We see therefore that, if imperialist domination has the vital need to practise cultural oppression, national liberation is necessarily an act of culture. "National Liberation and Culture”

  Amílcar Cabral (1924–1973) first seen 1970 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: from "National Liberation and Culture" (1970), speech celebrating the life of the leader the Mozambican Liberation Front (FRELIMO) Dr. Eduardo Mondlane

• “If we do not forget the historical perspectives of the major events in the life of humanity, if, while maintaining due respect for all philosophies, we do not forget that the world is the creation of man himself, then colonialism can be considered as the paralysis or deviation or even the halting of the history of one people in favour of the acceleration of the historical development of other peoples.”

  Amílcar Cabral (1924–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “In Africa, we are for an African policy which seeks to defend first and foremost the interests of African peoples, of each African country, but also for a policy which does not, at any time, forget the interests of the world, of all humanity.”

  Amílcar Cabral (1924–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “All post-colonial societies are still subject in one way or another to overt or subtle forms of neo colonial domination, and independence has not solved this problem. The development of new elites within independent societies, often buttressed by neo colonial institutions; the development of internal divisions based on racial, linguistic or religious discriminations; the continued unequal treatment of indigenous peoples in settler/invader societies—all these testify to the fact that post-colonialism is a continuing process of resistance and reconstruction.9”

  Amílcar Cabral (1924–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “We are not fighting against the Portuguese people, against individual Portuguese or Portuguese families. Without ever confusing the people of Portugal and Portuguese colonialism, we have been forced to take up arms in order to extirpate from the soil of our African fatherland, the shameful Portuguese colonial domination.”

  Amílcar Cabral (1924–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “We also believe that our struggle helps to influence the attitudes of people in other dominated African countries, especially in Southern Africa, although, of course, we are also aware that whatever other peoples can do by way of destroying colonialism or racism in their countries helps our struggle enormously. We could talk about this for hours; that’s the briefest answer I can give you.”

  Amílcar Cabral (1924–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “I think that the left and the international working-class movement should confront those states that claim to be socialist with their responsibilities; this does not, of course, mean cutting off all their possibilities of action, but it does mean denouncing all those states that are neocolonialist.”

  Amílcar Cabral (1924–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “We are moving from the position of a colony that has a Liberation Movement and that the people have already liberated, in ten years of armed struggle, the greater part of its national territory, to the position of a country that runs its own State and that has a part of its national territory occupied by foreign armed forces.”

  Amílcar Cabral (1924–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “At this very moment when, despite the contradictions which prevail in the world contradictions of ideology and of social and politica! systems --there are contacts between the most opposing poles, and these contacts are developing, at this very moment when certain nations are dreaming of conquering the cosmos, in a collective undertaking, to plant there the hopes of man, it is not really much to ask that before you le"ave for nebulous Andromeda or other far corners of the universe you should help us specifically and realistically to liberate our people from the scourge of Portuguesa colonialism, because, like you we should like to participate in the great human adventure either on this earth or across the universe.”

  Amílcar Cabral (1924–1973) first seen 1972 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: speech to United Nations Security Counsel (February 1, 1972)

• “After the Second World War, imperialism entered on a new phase: on the one hand, it worked out the new policy of aid, ie granted independence to the occupied countries plus 'aid' and, on the other hand, concentrated on preferential investment in the European countries; this was, above all, an attempt at rationalising imperialism. Even if it has not yet provoked reactions of a nationalist kind in the European countries, we are convinced that it will soon do so. As we see it, neocolonialism (which we may call rationalised imperialism) is more a defeat for the international working class than for the colonised peoples. Neocolonialism is at work on two fronts – in Europe as well as in the underdeveloped countries. Its current framework in the underdeveloped countries is the policy of aid, and one of the essential aims of this policy is to create a false bourgeoisie to put brakes on the revolution and to enlarge the possibilities of the petty bourgeoisie as a neutraliser of the revolution; at the same time it invests capital in France, Italy, Belgium, England and so on.”

  Amílcar Cabral (1924–1973) first seen 1964 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: from [https://www.marxists.org/subject/africa/cabral/1964/bassg.htm "Brief analysis of the social structure in Guinea" (May 1964). English language translation by Richard Handyside collected in Revolution in Guinea: sel…

• “We of the CONCP are committed to our peoples, we are fighting for the complete liberation of our peoples, but we are not fighting simply in order to hoist a flag in our countries and to have a national anthem. We of the CONCP are fighting so that insults may no longer rule our countries, martyred and scorned for centuries, so that our peoples may never more be exploited by imperialists-not only by Europeans, not only by people with white skin, because we do not confuse exploitation or exploiters with the colour of men's skins; we do not want any exploitation in our countries, not even by black people.”

  Amílcar Cabral (1924–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source