Anthills of the Savannah

Do your people have a proverb about a man looking for something inside the bag of a man looking for something?

[W]hatever you are is never enough; you must find a way to accept something, however small, from the other to make you whole and to save you from the mortal sin of righteousness and extremism. (p. 154)

I wouldn't put myself under the democratic dictatorship even of angels and archangels.

Aha! Come to think of it, that might explain the insistence of the oppressed that the oppressor must not be allowed to camouflage his appearance or confuse the poor by stealing and masquerading in their clothes. Perhaps it is the demand of that primitive integrity of the earth... Or, who knows, it might also be something less innocent (for the earth does have its streak of peasant cunning) - an insistence that your badge of privilege must never leave your breast, nor your coat of many colours your back... so that... on the wrathful day of reckoning... you will be as conspicuous as a peacock!

Charity is the opium of the privileged,

Those who mismanage our affairs would silence our criticism by pretending they have facts not available to the rest of us. Our best weapon against them is not to marshal facts, of which they are truly managers, but passion. Passion is our hope and strength.

The guilty suffers; the sufferer is guilty. As for the righteous, those whose arms are straight, they will always prosper!

That we may accept a limitation on our actions but never, under no circumstances, must we accept restriction on our thinking.

My people have a saying which my father often used. A man whose horse is missing will look everywhere even in the roof.

As the saying goes, the unexamined life is not worth-living.

While we do our good works let us not forget that the real solution lies in a world in which charity will have become unnecessary.

Don't disparage the day that still has an hour of light in its hand.