Top 40 Fela Kuti Quotes

Being African didn’t mean anything to me until later in my life.

A police uniform is just a piece of clothing sewn by the same tailors who sew your clothes.

When I was young we weren’t even allowed to speak our own languages in school. They called it ‘vernacular,’ as if only English was the real tongue.

America needs to hear some good sounds from Africa, man. The sanity of the world is going to be generated from Africa through art.

Music must awaken people to do their duty as citizens and act.

I’m not your average politician. I believe in higher forces.

I would never run away from my country. Even at the point of death, I doubt I would move out, because what is the point of leaving your own country?

I realized that you cannot think European and want to write or create something African. You have to think African in everything.

Our prisons are very bad. When I was in Ikoyi prison, people were dying every day. They were carrying bodies out of the prison every day.

No, I didn’t hear about ‘Live Aid.’ I was in prison, and we were not allowed newspapers in prison.

The human spirit is stronger than any government or institution.

By the time I finished school, I found out I wasn’t qualified to study anything but music.

It is a false belief to think you can own somebody, I’m out of that now. The man should understand he does not own the woman, and the woman should understand she does not own the man.

In America we talk about South Africa, but I tell people that apartheid is nothing compared to what is happening in my country where black oppresses black.

People thought I was trying to say that women had no say, no rights. I was not saying that. I was saying that women had a role, a duty. When they want to have a say in government – though in Africa they are not expected to do that – they are not discouraged. They can do what they want to do.

Spiritually speaking, every human being has a destiny and a duty to perform.

Marriage is a terrible institution, it creates such a regression of the mind.

My mother wasn’t any better than my father.

My music has never been a failure.

I’ve suffered quite a lot, to the point where I’ve experienced death. Years before I wasn’t fit to die, but I understand life better now. Death is nice, death is beauty.

When I do things, I do things honestly.

Without Tony Allen, there would have been no Afrobeat.

I think I’m going to lead my people one day. I’m sure of it.

My country will be a symbol of free human society.

My message was ‘Think African. Make schools read African history.’

The rhythm, the sounds, the tonality, the chord sequences, the individual effect of each instrument and each section of the band – I’m talking about a whole continent in my music.

American record companies seem to feel I am antiwestern, anticapitalism, anti the kind of society they like. They think I’m a troublemaker.

When you start to think of revenge, you start to think of hate. I don’t believe in hating people. It’s a retrogressive thing.

My mother was the most wicked mother ever seen in life when it came to beating. Oh-la-la! Every time I would say, ‘This is the end of me.’ Oh, how she would beat me.

I believe in pan-Africanism. This means that in many things – the judiciary, sports, economics and trade – we want Africanism to be involved, which is basically more freedom for the people.

My ideas are threatening to the government.

I’m playing deep African music.

If a female wants to do a man’s job, no one will stop her from doing it, but women have duties to perform as mothers.

The art, the greatness of the music, the experience of the music is what I’m about. I think most African artists have destroyed their artistry by commercialization, and I don’t want to belong to that bag.

Even death doesn’t worry me, man. When my mother died it was because she finished her time on earth. I know that when I die I’ll see her again, so how can I fear death?

Art itself is knowledge of the spiritual world. Art is information from higher forces, by those who are talented. I’m not jiving.

The African mind has a lot to contribute, not only to world understanding of the arts, but to an understanding of spiritualism. That is the contribution Africa will make to the world of the future – an injection of sanity into the environment of the universe itself.

Jazz was the beginning of rhythm music, which developed into rock and roll. But what the jazz musicians lost because they were so far from their homeland was the intricate rhythms of African music.

Western music is Bach, Handel and Schubert. It’s good music, cleverly done. As a musician, I can see that.

An African man should not do anything called housework or cooking.