Best 8 quotes of Ousmane Sembene on MyQuotes

Actually, even our virility depends on the gaze and the control of women. Without women, we cannot do anything. I think it's a good thing.

However long it stays in the river the tree-trunk will never turn into a crocodile.

In our society, talking about sex is still a taboo, and of course many village chiefs don't want to hear about that issue. "You are trying to deviate us from our way of life, our traditions." And of course the argument they give is that these traditions date back to before our birth, and actually they accuse us of being funded by the outside world to subvert their way of life.

I think what we need is goodwill because now our struggle is harder because it is an economic struggle. And now Europe is organising itself. So I think there needs to be a rupture between Africa and Europe, and all the international laws being conceived here in the west have to be revisited and changed.

It isn't those who are taken by force, put in chains, and sold as slaves who are the real slaves; it is those who will accept it, morally and physically.

The development of Africa will not happen without the effective participation of women. Our forefathers' image of women must be buried once for all.

The only way for us to come out of poverty is to work hard. Poverty means begging throughout the world.

If a man like that is killed, there is always another to take his place. That is not the important thing. But to act so that no man dares to strike you because he knows you speak the truth, to act so that you can no longer be arrested because you are asking for the right to live, to act so that all of this will end, both here and elsewhere; that is what should be in your thoughts. That is what you must explain to others, so that you will never again be forced to bow down before anyone, but also so that no one shall be forced to bow down before you. It was to tell you this that I asked you to come, because hatred must not dwell with you.