An awareness of our past is essential to the establishment of our personality and our identity as Africans.
A purely materialistic art would be...
Thousands of years ago, civilizations flourished in Africa which suffer not at all by comparison with those of other continents. In those centuries, Africans were politically free and economically independent. Their social patterns were their own and their cultures truly indigenous.
The fruits of one’s sweat and mental labour are always rewarding.
One cannot deny that in former times man’s life had been one of toil and hardship. It is correct to say, therefore, that modern civilization and the progress of science have greatly improved man’s life and have brought comfort and ease in their trail.
As man’s faculty attains higher level of development and sophistication, so do his wants in life.
I have lived too long to cherish many illusions about the essential high-mindedness of men when brought into stark confrontation with the issue of control over their security, and their property interests.
Observe that anyone who dies for his country is a fortunate man, but death takes what it wants, indiscriminately, in peace-time as well as in war. It is better to die with freedom than without it.
We all wish to live. We all seek a world in which men are freed of the burdens of ignorance, poverty, hunger and disease. And we shall all be hard-pressed to escape the deadly rain of nuclear fall-out should catastrophe overtake us.
Conflicts between nations will continue to arise. The real issue is whether they are to be resolved by force, or by resort to peaceful methods and procedures, administered by impartial institutions.
We have decided to bring to an end the most unequal, most unjust, most barbarous war of our age, and have chosen the road to exile in order that our people will not be exterminated and in order to consecrate ourselves wholly and in peace to the preservation of our empire’s independence.
Peace demands the united efforts of us all. Who can foresee what spark might ignite the fuse?
Outside the kingdom of the Lord there is no nation which is greater than any other. God and history will remember your judgment.
Today I stand before the world organization which has succeeded to the mantle discarded by its discredited predecessor.
The Charter of the United Nations expresses the noblest aspirations of man.
We have finished the job, what shall we do with the tools?
The United Nations continues to sense as the forum where nations whose interests clash may lay their cases before world opinion.
Democracy, republics: What do these words signify?
Here is our opportunity and our challenge. If the nuclear powers are prepared to declare a truce, let us seize the moment to strengthen the institutions and procedures which will serve as the means for the pacific settlement of disputes among men.
We Africans will fight, if necessary, and we know that we shall win, as we are confident in the victory of good over evil.
That generation is fortunate indeed which learns from other than its own bitter experience.