Top 40 Thomas Sankara Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “He who feeds you, controls you.”

— Thomas Sankara

2. “We must dare to invent the future.”

— Thomas Sankara

3. “Without patriotic political education, a soldier is only a potential criminal.”

— Thomas Sankara

4. “Debt is a cleverly managed reconquest of Africa.”

— Thomas Sankara

5. “You cannot carry out fundamental change without a certain amount of madness.”

— Thomas Sankara

6. “Never be shamed of being Afrikan.”

— Thomas Sankara

7. “The enemies of a people are those who keep them in ignorance.”

— Thomas Sankara

8. “We must learn to live the African way. It’s the only way to live in freedom and with dignity.”

— Thomas Sankara

9. “When the people stand up, imperialism trembles.”

— Thomas Sankara

10. “It took the madmen of yesterday for us to be able to act with extreme clarity today. I want to be one of those madmen. We must dare to invent the future.”

— Thomas Sankara

11. “I can hear the roar of women’s silence.”

— Thomas Sankara

12. “Comrades, there is no true social revolution without the liberation of women.”

— Thomas Sankara

13. “I want people to remember me as someone whose life has been helpful to humanity.”

— Thomas Sankara

14. “While revolutionaries as individuals can be murdered, you cannot kill ideas.”

— Thomas Sankara

15. “Women hold up the other half of the sky...”

— Thomas Sankara

16. “Imperialism is a system of exploitation that occurs not only in the brutal form of those who come with guns to conquer territory. Imperialism often occurs in more subtle forms, a loan, food aid, blackmail. We are fighting this system that allows a handful of men on earth to rule all of humanity.”

— Thomas Sankara

17. “May my eyes never see and my feet never take me to a society where half the people are held in silence.”

— Thomas Sankara

18. “The revolution and women’s liberation go together. We do not talk of women’s emancipation as an act of charity or out of a surge of human compassion. It is a basic necessity for the revolution to triumph. Women hold up the other half of the sky.”

— Thomas Sankara

19. “The spirit is smothered, as it were, by ignorance, but so soon as ignorance is destroyed, spirit shine forth, like the sun when released from clouds.”

— Thomas Sankara

20. “The Revolution Cannot Triumph Without the Emancipation of Women.”

— Thomas Sankara

21. “We have to work at decolonizing our mentality and achieving happiness within the limits of sacrifice we should be willing to make. We have to recondition our people to accept themselves as they are, to not be ashamed of their real situation, to be satisfied with it, to glory in it, even.”

— Thomas Sankara

22. “Comrades, there is no true social revolution without the liberation of women. May my eyes never see and my feet never take me to a society where half the people are held in silence. I hear the roar of women’s silence. I sense the rumble of their storm and feel the fury of their revolt.”

— Thomas Sankara

23. “Inequality can be done away with only by establishing a new society, where men and women will enjoy equal rights, resulting from an upheaval in the means of production and in all social relations. Thus, the status of women will improve only with the elimination of the system that exploits them.”

— Thomas Sankara

24. “The French revolution taught us the rights of man.”

— Thomas Sankara

25. “We make every effort to see that our actions live up to our words and be vigilant with regards to our behavior.”

— Thomas Sankara

26. “Our revolution in Burkina Faso draws on the totality of mans experiences since the first breath of humanity. We wish to be the heirs of all the revolutions of the world, of all the liberation struggles of the peoples of the Third World. We draw the lessons of the American revolution.”

— Thomas Sankara

27. “Our revolution is not a public-speaking tournament. Our revolution is not a battle of fine phrases. Our revolution is not simply for spouting slogans that are no more than signals used by manipulators trying to use them as catchwords, as codewords, as a foil for their own display. Our revolution is, and should continue to be, the collective effort of revolutionaries to transform reality, to improve the concrete situation of the masses of our country.”

— Thomas Sankara

28. “The greatest difficulty we have faced is the neocolonial way of thinking that exists in this country. We were colonized by a country, France, that left us with certain habits. For us, being successful in life, being happy, meant trying to live as they do in France, like the richest of the French.”

— Thomas Sankara

29. “Let there be an end to the arrogance of the big powers who miss no opportunity to put the rights of the people in question. Africa’s absence from the club of those who have the right to veto is unjust and should be ended.”

— Thomas Sankara

30. “Il faut choisir entre le champagne pour quelques-uns ou l’eau potable pour tous.”

— Thomas Sankara

31. “The only difference between the woman who sells her body through prostitution and she who sells herself in marriage is the price and duration of the contract.”

— Thomas Sankara

32. “The woman leads a twofold existence indeed, the depth of her social ostracism being equally only by her stoic endurance. To live in harmony with the society of man, to conform with men’s demands, she resigns herself to a self-effacement that is demeaning, she sacrifices herself.”

— Thomas Sankara

33. “The condition of women is therefore at the heart of the question of humanity itself, here, there, and everywhere.”

— Thomas Sankara

34. “As revolutionaries, we don’t have the right to say we are tired of explaining. We must never stop explaining. We know that when the people understand, they cannot help but follow us.”

— Thomas Sankara

35. “Un militaire sans formation politique n’est qu’un criminel en puissance.”

— Thomas Sankara

36. “You cannot carry out fundamental change without a certain amount of madness. In this case, it comes from nonconformity, the courage to turn your back on the old formulas, the courage to invent the future. Besides, it took the madmen of yesterday for us to be able to act with extreme clarity today. I want to be one of those madmen.”

— Thomas Sankara

37. “The patriarchal family made its appearance, founded on the sole and personal property of the father, who had become head of the family. Within this family the woman was oppressed.”

— Thomas Sankara

38. “Was it understood that the position of women in society means the condition of 52 percent of the Burkinabe population? Was it understood that this condition was the product of social, political, and economic structures, and of prevailing backward conceptions? And that the transformation of this position therefore could not be accomplished by a single ministry, even one led by a woman?”

— Thomas Sankara

39. “By changing the social order that oppresses women, the revolution creates the conditions for their genuine emancipation.”

— Thomas Sankara

40. “We have no need of a feminized apparatus to bureaucratically manage women’s lives or to issue sporadic statements about women’s lives by smooth-talking functionaries. What we need are women who will fight because they know that without a fight the old order will not be destroyed and no new order will be built. We are not looking to organize what exists but to definitively destroy and replace it.”

— Thomas Sankara

41. “Another problem doubtlessly lies in the feudal, reactionary, and passive attitude of many men who by their behavior continue to hold things back. They have no intention of jeopardizing the total control they have over women, either at home or in society in general. In the battle to build a new society, which is a revolutionary battle, the conduct of these men places them on the side of reaction and counterrevolution. For the revolution cannot triumph without the genuine emancipation of women.”

— Thomas Sankara