African Proverbs

Enjoy dozens of witty and insightful African proverbs and idioms that have been passed down from one generation to the next for hundreds of years!

• Money is sharper than the sword.
• A donkey knows no gratitude.
• A man’s wealth may be superior to him.
• Though the lion and the antelope happen to live in the same forest, the antelope still has time to grow up.
• With wealth one wins a woman.
• One does not love if one does not accept from others.
• The eye is a coward.
• A dog that steals, sells its body.
• Dogs do not prefer bones to meat; it is just that no one ever gives them meat.
• There is no one who became rich because he broke a holiday, no one who became fat because he broke a fast.
• The one chased away with a club comes back, but the one chased away with kihooto [reason] does not.
• One cannot both feast and become rich.
• The chicken is never declared innocent in the court of hawks.
• The rich are always complaining.
• The young can’t teach traditions to the old.
• The good looks of a moron do not stay that way for long.
• There is no medicine against old age.
• He who loves money must labor.
• If one is roasting two potatoes, one of them is bound to get charred.
• One person is thin porridge or gruel; two or three people are a handful of stiff cooked cornmeal.
• Instruction in youth is like engraving in stones.
• God is our neighbor when our brother is absent.
• Do they prepare leather [for a battle shield] the day they fight?
• One who sees something good must narrate it.
• If there is cause to hate someone, the cause to love has just begun.
• Do not follow a person who is running away.
• The pillar of the world is hope.
• A stranger does not skin a sheep that is paid as a fine at a chief’s court.
• That which is good is never finished.
• By coming and going, a bird weaves its nest.
• Poverty is slavery.
• Bad dancing does not break an engagement.
• Blind belief is dangerous.
• Goodness gets a seat.
• When cutting, look at the age of the machete.
• A sorcerer has no distinctive color.
• A champion bull starts from birth.
• You cannot take away someone’s luck.
• Even a friend cannot rescue one from old age.
• One who is crazy for meat hunts buffalo.
• People know each other better on a journey.
• He has not married a woman, because she is [equal to] a man.
• He who refuses to obey cannot command.
• A man who dictates separates himself from others.
• Whatever accomplishment you boast of in the world, there is someone better than you.
• The poor man and the rich man do not play together.
• It is foolhardy to climb two trees at once just because one has two feet.
• Let rats shoot arrows at each other.
• Do not vacillate or you will be left in-between doing something, having something, and being nothing.
• A real family eats the same cornmeal.

For thousands more proverbs and words of wisdom, collected from over 40 countries, check out Proverbs from Around the World!