Quote

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

Steven Biko

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Steven Biko
Age: 30 †
Born: 1946
Born: December 18
Died: 1977
Died: September 12
Activist
Civil Rights Advocate
Politician
Trade Unionist
Writer
Amsterdam
Netherlands
Bantu Stephen Biko
Ideas
Better
Live
Dies
Idea

More quotes by Steven Biko

Image
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.
Steven Biko
Image
A community is easily divide when their perception of the same thing is different
Steven Biko
Image
A people without a positive history is like a vehicle without an engine.
Steven Biko
Image
What Black Consciousness seeks to do is to produce real black people who do not regard themselves as appendages to white society. We do not need to apologise for this because it is true that the white systems have produced through the world a number of people who are not aware that they too are people.
Steven Biko
Image
Any warning normally implies, even if it is tacit, that there should be changes
Steven Biko
Image
In time, we shall be in a position to bestow on South Africa the greatest possible gift - a more human face.
Steven Biko
Image
Black Consciousness therefore takes cognizance of the deliberateness of God's plan in creating Black people black.
Steven Biko
Image
The most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.
Steven Biko
Image
Sure there are a few good whites just as much as there are a few bad Blacks. However what we are concerned here with is group attitudes and group politics. The exception does not make a lie or the rule - it merely substantiates it.
Steven Biko
Image
It becomes more necessary to see the truth as it is if you realize that the only vehicle for change are these people who have lost their personality.
Steven Biko
Image
Part of the approach envisaged in bringing about Black Consciousness has to be directed to the past, to seek to rewrite the history of the black man and to produce in it the heroes who form the core of the African background
Steven Biko
Image
The great powers of the world may have done wonders in giving the world an industrial and military look but the great gift still has to come from Africa - giving the world a more human face.
Steven Biko
Image
This is white man's integration, an integration based on exploitative values
Steven Biko
Image
Being black is not a matter of pigmentation - being black is a reflection of a mental attitude.
Steven Biko
Image
WOMEN must be at the forefront of nation-building to bring the South African citizenry together and, therefore, develop a whole new ethos of human co-existence
Steven Biko
Image
Change the way people think and things will never be the same
Steven Biko
Image
If one is free at heart, no man-made chains can bind one to servitude.
Steven Biko
Image
I am against the fact that a settler minority should impose an entire system of values on an indigenous people.
Steven Biko
Image
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.
Steven Biko
Image
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.
Steven Biko