Sourced and curated.

There cannot be salvation for any, except in the Church.

Confessions · 400

★ 7.8

Letter · Religious literature

St. Cyprian

256

★ 7.3

The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.

Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.

197

★ 7.1

Political literature

The Rebel · 1951

★ 7.1

No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.

What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem?

Long Walk to Freedom · 1994

★ 7.1

Treatise · Religious literature

What is a rebel? A man who says no.

220

★ 7.1

Essay · Philosophical literature · Political literature

Thus sayeth the Lord God of Israel: "Let my people go!"

The Rebel · 1951

★ 7.1

Film · Epic (film) · Drama (film) · Epic · Drama

I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of human rights.

The Ten Commandments · 1956

★ 7.1

Interview · TV program

1985

★ 6.9

A single sentence will suffice for modern man: he fornicated and read the papers.

Peace is much more precious than a piece of land.

The Fall · 1956

★ 6.2

Interview

Anwar Sadat

1978

★ 6.2

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.

The Myth of Sisyphus · 1942

★ 6.1

Knowing that certain nights whose sweetness lingers will keep returning to the earth and sea after we are gone, yes, this helps us die.

I have been a stranger in a strange land.

The Sea Close By · 1953

★ 6.1

Scripture · Religious literature

But I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue.

Exodus 2:22 · 1405 BC

★ 5.5

Scripture · Religious literature

Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.

Exodus 4:10 · 1405 BC

★ 5.5

It is not rebellion itself that is noble, but what it demands of you.

1985

★ 5.5

Novel · Political literature

A minimum of comfort is necessary for the practice of virtue.

The Rebel · 1947

★ 5.4

Patrice Lumumba

Congo, My Country · 1962

★ 5.3

Poem

The only freedom the gods grant us Is this: to submit Of our own free will to their sovereignty We should do just that, Since only in the illusion of freedom Does freedom exist.

Fernando Pessoa

1914

★ 5.0

Philosophical literature · Religious literature

A people was a multitude defined by the common objects of their love.

Every revolutionary ends by becoming either an oppressor or a heretic.

City of God · 426

★ 4.9

Essay · Philosophical literature · Political literature

The Rebel · 1951

★ 4.6

Outside the Kingdom of the Lord there is no nation which is greater than any other…God and history will remember your judgment.

Haile Selassie I

1936

★ 4.5

You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.

Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned... Until there are no longer first-class and second-class citizens of any nation... Until the color of a man's skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes... Until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race... Until that day, the dream of lasting peace and world citizenship and the rule of international morality will remain but a fleeting illusion, to be pursued but never attained.

The Fall · 1956

★ 4.5

Speech

Haile Selassie I

1963

★ 4.4

Philosophical literature · Political literature

Revolutions are brought about by men, by men who think as men of action and act as men of thought.

Kwame Nkrumah

Consciencism · 1964

★ 4.4

I have learned that if you must leave a place that you have lived and loved and where all your yesterdays are buried deep-leave it any way except a slow way; leave it the fastest way you can. Never turn back and never believe that an hour you remember is a better hour because it is dead. Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance.

Beryl Markham

West with the Night · 1942

★ 4.3

The weakness of little children's limbs is innocent, not their souls.

Hail Caesar, those who are about to die salute you.

Confessions · 400

★ 4.0

Biography · Historical literature

Suetonius

★ 3.9

He cannot have God for his father who has not the church for his mother.

St. Cyprian

251

★ 3.9

Philosophical literature · Religious literature

Hear the other side.

391

★ 3.9

To make peace with an enemy one must work with that enemy, and that enemy becomes one's partner.

1995

★ 3.9

True reconciliation does not consist in merely forgetting the past.

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.

1996

★ 3.9

Scripture · Religious literature

Deuteronomy 6:4 · 1405 BC

★ 3.8

Nothing is so difficult but that it may be found out by seeking.

Fortune assists the brave.

The Self-Tormentor · 163 BC

★ 3.8

Play · Comedy (play)

161 BC

★ 3.8

He is wise who tries everything before arms.

The Eunuch · 161 BC

★ 3.8

Truth does not blush.

Against the Valentinians · 207

★ 3.8

It is certainly no part of religion to compel religion.

There is no salvation outside the Church.

Ad Scapulam · 217

★ 3.8

Letter

St. Cyprian

Letter to Jubaianus · 256

★ 3.8

Too late I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient and ever new! Too late I loved you! And, behold, you were within me, and I out of myself and there I searched for you.

Confessions · 400

★ 3.8

The meaning of life is the most urgent of questions.

The Myth of Sisyphus · 1942

★ 3.8

Integrity has no need of rules.

The Myth of Sisyphus · 1942

★ 3.8

I am not truly free if I am taking away someone else's freedom, just as surely as I am not free when my freedom is taken away from me. The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity.

Long Walk to Freedom · 1994

★ 3.8

There is nothing so easy but that it becomes difficult when you do it reluctantly.

I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice.

The Self-Tormentor · 163 BC

★ 3.7

Letter

When the imagination sleeps, words are emptied of their meaning.

1944

★ 3.7

Essay · Political literature

Reflections on the Guillotine · 1957

★ 3.7

There's only one real sin, and that is to persuade oneself that the second-best is anything but the second-best.

Doris Lessing

The Golden Notebook · 1962

★ 3.7

None of you ask for anything-except everything, but just for so long as you need it.

Doris Lessing

The Golden Notebook · 1962

★ 3.7

It is through weakness and vulnerability that most of us learn empathy and compassion and discover our soul.

2004

★ 3.7

Man is one name belonging to every nation upon earth. In them all is one soul though many tongues. Every country has its own language; yet the subjects of which the untutored soul speaks are the same everywhere.

On the Testimony of the Soul · 198

★ 3.6

Sisyphyus, proletarian of the gods, powerless and rebellious, knows the whole extent of his wretched condition: it is what he thinks of during his descent. The lucidity that was to constitute his torture at the same time crowns his victory. There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.

The Myth of Sisyphus · 1942

★ 3.6

I'll tell you a big secret mon cher. Don't wait for the Last Judgment. It takes place every day.

The evil that men should turn their brothers into beasts of burden, to slave and suffer in dumb anguish, to be stripped of spirit, and hope, and faith—only because they are of another race, another creed. If there is a god, he did not mean this to be so.

The Fall · 1956

★ 3.6

Film · Epic (film) · Drama (film) · Epic · Drama

The Ten Commandments · 1956

★ 3.6

A woman without a man cannot meet a man, any man, of any age, without thinking, even if it's for a half-second, Perhaps this is the man.

Doris Lessing

1962

★ 3.6

Short story

The truth isn't always beauty, but the hunger for it is.

Nadine Gordimer

1963

★ 3.6

We prefer self-government with danger to servitude in tranquility.

Kwame Nkrumah

1967

★ 3.6

Love is two people mutually feeding each other, not one living on the soul of the other like a ghoul.

Bessie Head

1973

★ 3.6

Orientalism can be discussed and analyzed as the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient-dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it: in short, Orientalism as a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient.

Edward Said

Orientalism · 1978

★ 3.6

Having looked the beast of the past in the eye, having asked and received forgiveness and having made amends, let us shut the door on the past-not in order to forget it but in order not to allow it to imprison us.

A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished when others are tortured or oppressed, or treated as if they were less than who they are.

1998

★ 3.6

When we see others as the enemy, we risk becoming what we hate. When we oppress others, we end up oppressing ourselves. All of our humanity is dependent upon recognizing the humanity in others.

2000

★ 3.6

2004

★ 3.6

Freedom is not something that one people can bestow on another as a gift. They claim it as their own and none can keep it from them.

Kwame Nkrumah

1953

★ 3.5

Esssay

The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.

Steve Biko

1971

★ 3.5

Speech · TED Talk

The problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The Danger of a Single Story · 2009

★ 3.5

The African is conditioned, by the cultural and social institutions of centuries, to a freedom of which Europe has little conception, and it is not in his nature to accept serfdom for ever. He realizes that he must fight unceasingly for his own emancipation; for without this he is doomed to remain the prey of rival imperialisms.

Jomo Kenyatta

Facing Mount Kenya · 1938

★ 3.5

Travel writing

Human beings are perhaps never more frightening than when they are convinced beyond doubt that they are right.

Laurens van der Post

1958

★ 3.5

Out of a few misunderstandings with reality we construct beliefs and hopes, and we live on these crusts, which we call bread, just like poor children who play at being happy.

Fernando Pessoa

1982

★ 3.4

Out of the experience of an extraordinary human disaster that lasted too long, must be born a society of which all humanity will be proud...Never, never, and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another.

1994

★ 2.9

God became man so that man might become God.

Athanasius

On the Incarnation · 318

★ 2.2

A law that is not just does not seem to me to be a law.

389

★ 2.2

Lovers' quarrels are the renewal of love.

The Girl from Andros · 166 BC

★ 2.1

Some people ask, "What if the sky were to fall?"

Nothing has yet been said that's not been said before.

The Self-Tormentor · 163 BC

★ 2.1

Play · Comedy (play)

The Eunuch · 161 BC

★ 2.1

There are vicissitudes in all things.

The Eunuch · 161 BC

★ 2.1

Out of the frying pan into the fire.

On the Flesh of Christ · 206

★ 2.1

It is to believed because it is absurd.

One principle must make the universe a single complex living creature, one from all.

On the Flesh of Christ · 206

★ 2.1

Philosophical literature

Plotinus

Enneads · 270

★ 2.1

I know the disposition of women: when you will, they won't; when you won't, they set their hearts upon you of their own inclination.

Everything that is hard to attain is easily assailed by the generality of men.

The Eunuch · 161 BC

★ 2.0

Philosophical literature

Ptolemy

Tetrabiblos · 168

★ 2.0

It should be known that at the beginning of a dynasty, taxation yields a large revenue from small assessments. At the end of a dynasty, taxation yields a small revenue from large assessments.

Ibn Khaldun

1377

★ 2.0

There was never a great man who had not a great mother.

Olive Schreiner

The Story of an African Farm · 1883

★ 2.0

There is no love of life without despair of life.

During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in har¬ mony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.

Love of Life · 1937

★ 2.0

Courtroom speech · Speech

What I know most surely about morality and the duty of man I owe to sport.

1964

★ 2.0

I am angry. We should all be angry. Anger has a long history of bringing about positive change.

1979

★ 2.0

Essay · Feminist literature

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

We Should All Be Feminists · 2014

★ 2.0

Do not be arrogant because of your knowledge, but confer with the ignorant man as with the learned... Good speech is more hidden than malachite, yet it is found in the possession of women slaves at the millstones.

Ptahhotep

The Maxims of Ptahhotep · 2375 BC

★ 1.9

Do not set your heart on wealth… Do not strain to seek increase, What you have, let it suffice you. If riches come by theft, They will not stay the night with you…. They made themselves wings like geese, And flew away to the sky.

Amenemope

1075 BC

★ 1.9

The Lord says in the gospel; "I am the Truth." He does not say "I am custom." Therefore, when the truth is made manifest, custom must give way to truth.

Libosus of Vaga

Augustine of Hippo, On Baptism, Against the Donatists · 400

★ 1.9

Personal journal

Politics, and the fate of mankind, are shaped by men without ideals and without greatness.

1962

★ 1.9

The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny.

Wole Soyinka

1972

★ 1.9

Speech · Commencement address

The size of your dreams must always exceed your current capacity to achieve them. If your dreams do not scare you they are not big enough.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

2011

★ 1.9

The Dead Sea in the Middle East receives freshwater, but it has no outlet, so it doesn't pass the water out. It receives beautiful water from the rivers, and the water goes dank. I mean, it just goes bad. And that's why it is the Dead Sea. It receives and does not give. In the end, generosity is the best way of becoming more, more, and more joyful.

Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.

2016

★ 1.9

Fernando Pessoa

1935

★ 1.9

We are all exceptional cases. We all want to appeal against something! Each of us insists on being innocent at all costs, even if he has to accuse the whole human race and heaven itself.

The Fall · 1956

★ 1.9

The liberal must understand that the days of the Noble Savage are gone; that the blacks do not need a go-between in this struggle for their own emancipation. No true liberal should feel any resentment at the growth of black consciousness. Rather, all true liberals should realize that the place for their fight for justice is within their white society.

Steve Biko

1970

★ 1.9

Exile is predicated on the existence of, love for, and a real bond with one's native place; the universal truth of exile is not that one has lost that love or home, but that inherent in each is an unexpected, unwelcome loss. Regard experiences then as if they were to disappear.

Edward Said

1993

★ 1.9

Interview

Art allows you to imbue the truth with a sort of magic, so it can infiltrate the psyches of more people, including those who don't believe the same things as you.

Wangechi Mutu

2014

★ 1.9

Be cheerful while you are alive.

Ptahhotep

The Maxims of Ptahhotep · 2375 BC

★ 1.3

Philosophical literature

All things are filled full of signs, and it is a wise man who can learn about one thing from another.

Plotinus

Enneads · 270

★ 1.3

Interview · TV program

You will never be free until we are free.

1999

★ 1.3

One who is serious all day will never have a good time, while one who is frivolous all day will never establish a household.

Ptahhotep

The Maxims of Ptahhotep · 2375 BC

★ 1.2

Man is a child of the customs and the things he has become used to. He is not the product of his natural disposition and temperment. The conditions to which he has become accustomed, until they have become for him a quality of character and matters of habit and custom, have replaced his natural disposition.

Ibn Khaldun

1377

★ 1.2