Steven Biko Quotes

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.

- Steven Biko

Merely by describing yourself as black you have started on a road towards emancipation, you have committed yourself to fight against all forces that seek to use your blackness as a stamp that marks you out as a subservient being.

- Steven Biko

The revolutionary sees his task as liberation not only of the oppressed but also of the oppressor. Happiness can never truly exist in a state of tension.

- Steven Biko

A Black man should be more independent and depend on himself for his freedom and not to take it for granted that someone would lead him to it. The blacks are tired of standing at the touchlines to witness a game that they should be playing. They want to do things for themselves and all by themselves.

- Steven Biko

The most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.

- Steven Biko

If one is free at heart, no man-made chains can bind one to servitude, but if one's mind is so manipulated and controlled by the oppressor, then there will be nothing the oppressed can do to scare his powerful masters.

- Steven Biko

A people without a positive history is like a vehicle without an engine.

- Steven Biko

Black Consciousness seeks to infuse the black community with a new-found pride in themselves, their efforts, their value systems, their culture, their religion and their outlook to life.

- Steven Biko

The fact that apartheid has been tied up with white supremacy, capitalist exploitation, and deliberate oppression makes the problem much more complex. Material want is bad enough, but coupled with spiritual poverty, it kills.

- Steven Biko

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

- Steven Biko

I entered the University of Natal as a preliminary-year student in 1966 and stayed on to June 1972, when I was expelled from the university. I was then doing third-year medicine.

- Steven Biko

The press is largely directed at white society or the so-called electorate whose values are laced with racial prejudice against black people.

- Steven Biko

The black man has become a shell, a shadow of man, completely defeated, drowning in his own misery, a slave, an ox bearing the yoke of oppression with sheepish timidity.

- Steven Biko

In a bid for change, we have to take off our coats, be prepared to lose our comfort and security, our jobs and positions of prestige, and our families... A struggle without casualties is no struggle.

- Steven Biko

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.

- Steven Biko

Tradition has it that whenever a group of people has tasted the lovely fruits of wealth, security, and prestige, it begins to find it more comfortable to believe in the obvious lie and accept that it alone is entitled to privilege.

- Steven Biko

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

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.

- Steven Biko

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

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

- Steven Biko

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.'

- Steven Biko

Being black is not a matter of pigmentation - being black is a reflection of a mental attitude.

- Steven Biko

I would describe and I have described myself to people who ask as a freedom fighter.

- Steven Biko

Black man, you are on your own.

- Steven Biko