The great powers of the world may have done wonders in giving the world an industrial look, but the great gift still has to come from Africa - giving the world a more human face.
Interpretation
Biko emphasizes the importance of human values over industrial progress.
In this quote, Steven Biko highlights the contrast between technological advancement and the essential human qualities that are often overlooked. He suggests that while industrialization has transformed the world, the true gift that humanity needs is the deep-seated values and perspectives that Africa embodies, which can provide a more humane and compassionate approach to life.
In practice
During a speech on global cooperation, you might reference this quote to emphasize the need for compassion alongside technological progress.
It becomes more necessary to see the truth as it is if you realise that the only vehicle for change are these people who have lost their personality. The first step therefore is to make the black man come to himself; to pump back life into his empty shell; to infuse him with pride and dignity, to remind him of his complicity in the crime of allowing himself to be misused and therefore letting evil reign supreme in the country of his birth.
We do not want to be reminded that it is we, the indigenous people, who are poor and exploited in the land of our birth. These are concepts which the Black Consciousness approach wishes to eradicate from the black man's mind before our society is driven to chaos by irresponsible people from Coca-cola and hamburger cultural backgrounds.
When you say 'Black is beautiful' you are saying, 'Man you are okay as you are, begin to look upon yourself as a human being'.
We are concerned with that curious bunch of nonconformists who explain their participation in negative terms: that bunch of do-gooders that goes under all sorts of names - liberals, leftists, etc. These are the people who argue that they are not responsible for white racism and the country's 'inhumanity to the black man.'
I'm going to be me as I am, and you can beat me or jail me or even kill me, but I'm not going to be what you want me to be.
Black Consciousness is an attitude of the mind and a way of life, the most positive call to emanate from the black world for a long time. Its essence is the realisation by the black man of the need to rally together with his brothers around the cause of their oppression - the blackness of their skin - and to operate as a group to rid themselves of the shackles that bind them to perpetual servitude.
The body is a reservoir of all sorts of tensions and dark forces. And it's also the potential source of amazing energy. This thing wants to live. It is a powerful engine. The brain (is) a reservoir of images, dreams, fears, associations, language. And its potential we can't even begin to understand. Movement begins to negotiate the distance between the brain and the body and it can be surprising what we learn about each other.
Outer beauty is inner beauty made visible, and it manifests itself in the light that flows in our eyes.
It is hard to put aside partisanship. It is hard to give up the easy wisecracking jeer that divides and destroys. It is hard - very hard - to have worked sincerely and wholeheartedly for a cause and to have lost. Most of all, it is hard to put aside personal prejudices. And yet we must put these things aside.
Thinking doesn't pay. Just makes you discontented with what you see around you.
We can't live in a state of perpetual doubt, so we make up the best story possible and we live as if the story were true.
Nothing brings out the lower traits of human nature like office-seeking. Men of good character and impulses are betrayed by it into all sorts of meanness.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.