Popularly called the bad child of Africa by most of his critics, Ahmed Sekou Touré was the first President of the Republic of Guninea. Born January 9, 1922 to a farmer, Ahmed Sekou Touré was a devout Muslim, a Cultural enthusiast and a politician.
He was the founder of the Post and Telecommunications Workers’ Union and a founding member of African Democratic Rally.
Touré was a realist, a key player of the African independence movement and the unsung hero of Africa’s revolution.
Here are Top 10 Famous Quotes of the first President of Guinea, Sekou Touré
1. At sunset when you pray to God, say over and over that each man is a brother and that all men are equal.
2. We have already said that human discoveries, intellectual acquisitions, the expansion of knowledge do not belong exclusively to anyone. They are the result of a sum of universal discoveries, acquisitions and expansion in which no people has the right to claim a monopoly.
3. To take part in the African revolution it is not enough to write a revolutionary song: you must fashion the revolution with the people. And if you fashion it with the people, the songs will come by themselves.
4. The science which results from all universal knowledge has no nationality. The ridiculous conflicts which rage about the origin of this or that discovery do not interest us, because they add nothing to the value of the discovery.
5. The culture of a people is necessarily determined by its material and moral conditions. The man and his surroundings constitute a whole
6. The man, before becoming the leader of a group, a people, or party of the people, has inevitably made a choice between the past and the future. In this way he will represent and defend the values, or he will sustain and give impulsion to the development and constant enrichment of all the values of his people.
7. An African statesman is not a naked boy begging from rich capitalists
8. The colonial schools teach us about the wars of the Gauls, the life of Joan of Arc or Napoleon, the list of French Départements, the poems of Lamartine or the plays of Moliere, as though Africa had never had any history, any past, any geographical existence, any cultural life.
9. We ask you therefore, not to judge us or think of us in terms of what we were or even of what we are but rather to think of us in terms of history and what we will be tomorrow.
10. We should go down to the grassroots of our culture, not to remain there, not to be isolated there, but to draw strength and substance there from, and with whatever additional sources of strength and material we acquire, proceed to set up a new form of society raised to the level of human progress.
powerful words