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Ezekiel Mphahlele Quotes

1919–2008 South Africa

Es'kia Mphahlele (17 December 1919 – 27 October 2008) was a South African writer, educationist, artist and activist celebrated as the Father of African Humanism and one of the founding figures of modern African literature.

South Africa
Authors

Random Ezekiel Mphahlele quote

6 quotes

The African creative writer must both interpret his world imaginatively and act as a political man.

School knowledge and activity should reinforce our need for one another; it should reconfirm our traditional compassion and impulse to share.

It is not right for us today to write off our past generations and pretend that history began when we were born.

We need to know our Afrika intimately, even while we tune into the world at large.

The Black man must enter the white man's house through the back door. The Black man does most of the dirty work. Black man cleans the streets but mustn't walk freely on the pavement; Black man must build houses for the white man but cannot live in them; Black man cooks the white man's food but eats what is left over.

It was my impressions in Britain that threw up into relief my thoughts on what I choose to call the African image, and I yielded to the inner compulsion to put them down on paper.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Ezekiel Mphahlele (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.