Steve Biko Quotes

Steve Biko's words are fierce and hopeful, urging justice, freedom, and human dignity.

20 quotes

1. The basic tenet of black consciousness is that the black man must reject all value systems that seek to make him a foreigner in the country of his birth and reduce his basic human dignity.

2. Even today, we are still accused of racism. This is a mistake. We know that all interracial groups in South Africa are relationships in which whites are superior, blacks inferior. So as a prelude whites must be made to realize that they are only human, not superior. Same with blacks. They must be made to realize that they are also human, not inferior.

3. 'You are either alive and proud or you are dead, and when you are dead, you can't care anyway,'

4. 'Apartheid - both petty and grand - is obviously evil. Nothing can justify the arrogant assumption that a clique of foreigners has the right to decide on the lives of a majority'

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

6. The logic behind white domination is to prepare the black man for the subservient role in this country. Not so long ago this used to be freely said in parliament, even about the educational system of the black people. It is still said even today, although in a much more sophisticated language. To a large extent the evil-doers have succeeded in producing at the output end of their machine a kind of black man who is man only in form. This is the extent to which the process of dehumanization has advanced.

7. The system concedes nothing without demand, for it formulates its very method of operation on the basis that the ignorant will learn to know, the child will grow into an adult and therefore demands will begin to be made. It gears itself to resist demands in whatever way it sees fit.

8. 'In time, we shall be in a position to bestow on South Africa the greatest possible gift-a more human face.

9. In time, we shall be in a position to bestow on South Africa the greatest possible gift - a more human face.

10. It is better to die for an idea that will live, than to live for an idea that will die.

11. The power of a movement lies in the fact that it can indeed change the habits of people. This change is not the result of force but of dedication, of moral persuasion.

12. You are not alone Blackman

13. 'Even today, we are still accused of racism. This is a mistake. We know that all interracial groups in South Africa are relationships in which whites are superior, blacks inferior. So as a prelude whites must be made to realise that they are only human, not superior. Same with blacks. They must be made to realise that they are also human, not inferior.'

14. “Instead of involving themselves in an all-out attempt to stamp out racism from their white society, liberals waste a lot of time trying to prove to as many blacks as they can find that they are liberal.”

15. “The greatest weapon in the hand of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.”

16. “Double consciousness is knowing the particularity of the white world in the face of its enforced claim to universality. Double consciousness is knowing the history offered up to black people—its many interpretations and echoes of white superiority and black inferiority, of white heroism and black cowardice, and even the temporal and geographical location of history’s beginning as a step off of the African continent—is a falsehood that blacks are forced to treat as truth in so many countless ways. Double consciousness, in other words, is knowing a lie while living its contradiction.”

17. “The most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed. So as a prelude whites must be made to realise that they are only human, not superior. Same with Blacks. They must be made to realise that they are also human, not inferior.”

18. “The most powerful weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed”

19. We regard witchcraft, as part of the mystery of our cultural heritage

20. “A game at which the liberals have become masters is that of deliberate evasiveness. The question often comes up 'what can you do?'. If you ask him to do something like stopping to use segregated facilities or dropping out of varsity to work at menial jobs like all blacks or defying and denouncing all provisions that make him privileged, you always get the answer - 'but that's unrealistic!' While this may be true, it only serves to illustrate the fact that no matter what a white man does, the colour of his skin - his passport to privilege- will always put him miles ahead of the black men. Thus in the ultimate analysis, no white person can escape being part of the oppressor camp.”