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

— Ezekiel Mphahlele

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More quotes by Ezekiel Mphahlele

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.

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.

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Ezekiel Mphahlele (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.