Quotes from Thomas Sankara

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

The French revolution taught us the rights of man.

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

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

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.

Everything that man can imagine, he is capable of creating.

Women hold up the other half of the sky.

Comrades, there is no true social revolution without the liberation of women

I can hear the roar of women's silence

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.

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.

he who feeds you, controls you

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.

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.

I can hear the roar of women's silence

Il faut choisir entre le champagne pour quelques-uns ou l'eau potable pour tous.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Nous ne parlons pas de l'émancipation des femmes par charité, mais parce que pour nous c'est une base nécessaire pour le triomphe de notre révolution".

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.