Steve Biko Quotes & Sayings

Black Consciousness is in essence the realization by the black man of the need to rally together with his brothers around the cause of their oppression. — Steve Biko

It is better to die for an idea that will live, than to live for an idea that will die — Steve Biko

I write what I like — Steve Biko

Double consciousness is knowing the particularity of the white world in the face of its enforced claim to universality. Double consciousness is knowing the history offered up to black people - its many interpretations and echoes of white superiority and black inferiority, of white heroism and black cowardice, and even the temporal and geographical location of history's beginning as a step off of the African continent - is a falsehood that blacks are forced to treat as truth in so many countless ways. Double consciousness, in other words, is knowing a lie while living its contradiction. — Steve Biko

I would like to remind the black ministry, and indeed all black people, that God is not in the habit of coming down from heaven to solve people's problems on earth. — Steve Biko

The greatest weapon in the hand of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed. — Steve Biko

The most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.
So as a prelude whites must be made to realise that they are only human, not superior. Same with Blacks. They must be made to realise that they are also human, not inferior. — Steve Biko

What Black Consciousness seeks to do is to produce real black people who do not regard themselves as appendages to white society. We do not need to apologise for this because it is true that the white systems have produced through the world a number of people who are not aware that they too are people. — Steve Biko

A game at which the liberals have become masters is that of deliberate evasiveness. The question often comes up 'what can you do?'. If you ask him to do something like stopping to use segregated facilities or dropping out of varsity to work at menial jobs like all blacks or defying and denouncing all provisions that make him privileged, you always get the answer - 'but that's unrealistic!' While this may be true, it only serves to illustrate the fact that mo matter what a white man does, the colour of his skin - his passport to privilege- will always put him miles ahead of the black men. Thus in the ultimate analysis, no white person can escape being part of the oppressor camp. — Steve Biko

Instead of involving themselves in an all-out attempt to stamp out racism from their white society, liberals waste a lot of time trying to prove to as many blacks as they can find that they are liberal. — Steve Biko

At the time of his death, Biko had a wife and three children for which he left a letter that stated in one part: I've devoted my life to see equality for blacks, and at the same time, I've denied the needs of my family. Please understand that I take these actions, not out of selfishness or arrogance, but to preserve a South Africa worth living in for blacks and whites. — Steve Biko