Julius Nyerere Quotations

Should we really let our people starve so we can pay our debts.

Take every penny you have set aside for aid for Tanzania and spend it in the UK, explaining to people the facts and causes of poverty.

Freedom to many means immediate betterment, as if by magic. Unless I can meet at least some of these aspirations, my support will wane and my head will roll just as surely as the tickbird follows the rhino.

The African is not 'Communistic' in his thinking; he is -- if I may coin an expression - 'communitary'.

I have read and re-read the Arusha Declaration and found nothing wrong with it except perhaps replacing a few commas here and there... it was clear for some of us that it would only be a mad man who would stand up and defend the Arusha Declaration.

A house should not be built so close to another that a chicken from one can lay an egg in the neighbor's yard, nor so far away that a child cannot shout to the yard of his neighbor.

We, in Africa, have no more need of being 'converted' to socialism than we have of being 'taught' democracy. Both are rooted in our past -- in the traditional society which produced us.

The greatest contraceptive one can have in the developing world is the knowledge that your children will live

African nationalism is meaningless, dangerous, anachronistic, if it is not, at the same time, pan-Africanism.

We spoke and acted as if, given the opportunity for self-government, we would quickly create utopias. Instead injustice, even tyranny, is rampant.