Top 10 African Proverbs That Will Change How You Think

Summary

• The Maxims of Ptahhotep survive on the Papyrus Prisse, a roll more than seven metres long dating to about 1800 BC. The text holds a maxim saying that wise speech can be found among women grinding grain (Bibliothèque nationale de France)
• Óscar Ribas's Missosso (1961–1964) recorded 500 proverbs in bilingual Kimbundu–Portuguese text, at least 18 of which refer to the slave trade and slavery in Angola (José Domingos Pedro, UNESCO Oralidad)
• Christaller published a collection of 3,600 Twi proverbs in 1879, and a later Akan proverb dictionary, Bu Me Bɛ, holds over 7,000 (Basel Mission/DACB; NYU Law)
• South Africa's Constitutional Court used the Nguni maxim umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu in its first judgment of 6 June 1995, which invoked ubuntu to declare the death penalty unconstitutional (Constitution Hill; Obiter)

This list is ordered by the date of the written record cited for each proverb, oldest first, rather than ranked. Most of these sayings were spoken long before anyone wrote them down, so the dates mark when they entered the written record, not when they began.

Selected Details About Each Proverb on the List

1. "Good speech is more hidden than greenstone, yet it is found among the women at the grindstones" (Ancient Egyptian, Egypt)

Copied around 1800 BC, and attributed to Ptahhotep, a vizier of King Djedkare Isesi, whom the French National Library dates to 2388–2356 BC (BnF). Émile Prisse d'Avennes donated the papyrus to the Cabinet des Médailles in 1845 and published a facsimile in 1847, and its handwriting places the copy in Egypt's 12th dynasty (Collège de France). The attribution is disputed: some scholars see a Middle Kingdom composition dressed up with the name of an Old Kingdom sage. The maxim warns an official not to be proud of his learning, because, as one summary puts it, wisdom is not the monopoly of the learned (Satyori). It is a striking line from a text written for the elite: the best speech might come from a servant grinding grain. Egyptologists rank the Instruction of Ptahhotep among the most difficult Egyptian literary texts to translate (Wikipedia, "The Maxims of Ptahhotep").

2. "Haba na haba hujaza kibaba" — Little by little fills the measure (Swahili, Tanzania and Kenya)

Entry no. 70 in W. E. Taylor's African Aphorisms (1891); the University of Illinois Swahili proverb database lists it with Taylor's number alongside nine other collections (University of Illinois). Taylor's book was the earliest published collection of Swahili proverbs, and it remains the richest source. Working from Mombasa, Taylor collected about 664 proverbs and aphorisms from the Swahili Coast and from inland regions (SOAS). A kibaba is a small grain measure, so the image is of a container filled one handful at a time. The proverb is still in everyday use: a 2026 Kilimanjaro Lager campaign in Tanzania used it among proverbs most Tanzanians already know by heart (Bizcommunity). Swahili's reach today rests on its role as a lingua franca for tens of millions of second-language speakers.

3. "Anger draws arrows from the quiver, but good words draw kola nuts from the bag" (Yoruba, Nigeria and Benin)

Printed in 1894 by the British officer A. B. Ellis, who wrote that the Yoruba had hundreds of proverbs which appear to be peculiar to themselves and listed 250 numbered examples plus a set of paired couplets. This line comes from those couplets. Kola nuts are offered to welcome guests, so the contrast is between speech that starts a fight and speech that opens hospitality. Oyekan Owomoyela's Yoruba Proverb Treasury paraphrases the same idea: judicious speech brings the kolanut out of the pocket, while careless speech calls out the sword from its scabbard (University of Nebraska–Lincoln). The Yoruba also have a proverb about proverbs: the proverb is the horse of speech; when speech is lost, proverbs are used to find it. Yoruba proverbs were in print even earlier: Samuel Ajayi Crowther's 1852 Vocabulary of the Yoruba Language includes a section of "Additional proverbs" on pages 289–291 (Internet Archive).

4. "Egbe bere, ugo bere" — Let the kite perch and let the eagle perch; whichever says the other should not, may its wing break (Igbo, Nigeria)

Brought to world readers by Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, which appeared in London on 17 July 1958 (Cambridge University Press). The proverb appears in a prayer over kola nut early in the novel (Wikiquote, citing the text). In Igbo usage, the eagle stands for nobility, achievement and leadership, while the kite stands for the ordinary or less privileged citizen. The broken wing is natural justice: those who try to destroy others ruin themselves (Afriprov, September 2026). Heinemann first printed 2,000 hardback copies of the novel, and it later became the first title in the African Writers Series (Mail & Guardian, 2018). Sales estimates vary widely: the Mail & Guardian gives about 10 million, while PBS's Great American Read cites more than 20 million copies and fifty-seven languages.

5. "The one who throws the stone forgets; the one hit by the stone never forgets" (Kimbundu, Angola)

One of 500 Kimbundu proverbs in Óscar Ribas's three-volume Missosso (1961–1964). Angolan ethnologist José Domingos Pedro reproduces it among 18 proverbs he links to the slave trade and slavery. His gloss: the victim never forgets the harm done to them (UNESCO, Oralidad). Kimbundu was the main language of Njinga's kingdom of Ndongo. Its proverbs were among the first in Angola to be written down. The Angolan writer J. D. Cordeiro da Matta published Philosophia popular em proverbios angolenses in Lisbon in 1891, a 187-page work, and Héli Chatelain's Folk-Tales of Angola followed in 1894. Pedro argues that Angola's oral heritage was ignored during the slavery era and explicitly denied by Portuguese colonialism until the 1960s. Another proverb in his list makes a pointed claim for its time: merit is not a privilege of great families.

6. "All persons are children of God; no one is a child of the earth" (Akan, Ghana)

Cited by the Ghanaian philosopher Kwame Gyekye in An Essay on African Philosophical Thought (Cambridge University Press, 1987). He uses it to argue that a person is conceived as having in their nature an aspect of God, and therefore intrinsically valuable (Wikipedia, "Kwame Gyekye"). The proverb challenges a common claim that African thought dissolves the individual into the group. Akan proverbs have a long written record. The Basel missionary J. G. Christaller published 3,600 Twi proverbs in 1879. In 1916 the colonial anthropologist R. S. Rattray translated 830 proverbs of Christaller's collection under the title Ashanti Proverbs (The Primitive Ethics of a Savage People) (Wikipedia, "Robert Sutherland Rattray"). Later collections went further: C. A. Akrofi gathered 1,000 proverbs in 1958, and Fr. Kofi Ron Lange published a translation of all 3,600 in 1985 (Michigan State University).

7. "Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu" — A person is a person through other persons (Zulu and Xhosa, South Africa)

Written into South African law in S v Makwanyane, decided 6 June 1995. The 11 judges first took their seats to hear the case on 15 February 1995 and heard arguments for three days (Constitutional Court of South Africa). The word ubuntu already appeared in the postamble of the Interim Constitution, but the Court turned it into a tool for interpreting the Constitution. Justice Yvonne Mokgoro defined ubuntu as humaneness. She explained the maxim as describing the importance of group solidarity for survival, and found that ubuntu supports the right to life and human dignity (Constitution Hill). The Court struck down the death penalty. A proverb about belonging thus became part of one of the most important rulings in South Africa's democratic history.

8. "By persevering, the egg walks on legs" (Oromo and Amharic, Ethiopia)

Posted as Afriprov's African Proverb of the Month for January 1999 in its Oromo form, Turina keessatt killen millaan adeemti. The literal word order runs: "Waiting inside the egg eventually by foot goes" (Afriprov). The image is an egg that, given time, hatches into a chick walking on its own. Amharic speakers use a near-identical saying, rendered as "the egg walks slowly on its legs" (Ling). The proverb's presence in two languages from different branches of the Afro-Asiatic family shows how proverbs cross language lines inside one country. The Oromo version was submitted by Rev. George Cotter, who worked at a research centre in Debre Zeit. His Proverbs and Sayings of the Oromo People of Ethiopia and Kenya runs to 652 pages and holds 4,800 proverbs and sayings (Edwin Mellen Press), and his shorter Ethiopian Wisdom (1996) holds 1,497 Oromo proverbs from four major dialects.

9. "Ijambo ry'umukuru ritorwamo igufwa" — From the word of an elder is derived a bone (Kinyarwanda and Kirundi, Rwanda and Burundi)

Afriprov's African Proverb of the Month for December 2002, later reused in its 2005 calendar under the theme of wisdom (Afriprov; Afriprov calendar, May 2005). A bone is the solid part of a meal, the part with substance to it. Read that way, the proverb says an elder's brief words hold something worth chewing on. Rwanda's proverbs were collected early, though the first title is revealing: the Belgian missionary Eugène Hurel's 1922 collection was called La poésie chez les primitifs, "poetry among the primitives" (British Museum Library). The reference collection today is Proverbes du Rwanda by Pierre Crépeau and Simon Bizimana, published by the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren in 1979. It runs to 800 pages and holds more than 4,000 proverbs in Kinyarwanda and French (University of Pennsylvania catalogue; Hurel e-book, 2023).

10. "Mũgogo wĩ rũũĩ ndũrĩ hĩndĩ ũgatwĩka kĩng'ang'i" — A log in the river will never be a crocodile (Gikuyu, Kenya)

Heard near Mount Kenya in Nyeri in 1989 during preparations for a marriage, and published by Afriprov in September 2012. A man from Meru with a criminal record wanted to marry a Kikuyu woman. The elders did not forbid the marriage outright, but used the proverb to tell her that bad character rarely changes and that the choice was hers alone. The proverb was not in Gerald Wanjohi's Under One Roof, a collection of 1,821 Gikuyu proverbs published in 2001, so Afriprov added it to the record. Researchers also noticed that Nyeri is too cold for crocodiles. They traced the image to the Thagana River in Murang'a County, where crocodiles live. Gikuyu proverbs entered print in G. Barra's 1,000 Kikuyu Proverbs, published in Nairobi in 1939. The crocodile proverb shows that the written record is still incomplete, even for well-studied languages.

Quick Answers to Commonly Asked Questions About this Topic

What is the oldest recorded African proverb?

The oldest on this list comes from the Maxims of Ptahhotep. The text survives on the Papyrus Prisse, copied about 1800 BC and attributed to a vizier who served a king of the 24th century BC. It is a written wisdom text rather than a folk saying collected from speech, but it uses the same short, comparative style as later African proverbs.

Is "It takes a village to raise a child" really an African proverb?

No exact African original has been found. When NPR investigated in 2016, it could not pinpoint an origin, and proverb scholar Wolfgang Mieder could not find a specific African proverb matching that wording. The Yale Book of Quotations traces the saying back to 1989. Similar ideas do exist in African languages, such as a Kijita proverb meaning a child's upbringing belongs to the community.

Who said "When an old man dies, a library burns"?

The Malian writer Amadou Hampâté Bâ, at UNESCO's 11th General Conference, in a speech on 1 December 1960. It is a modern line, not an ancient proverb, although it is often presented as one. In 1966 he refined it: in Africa, when a traditionalist elder dies, an unexploited library burns (SenePlus).

Why is "Until the lion learns to write, tales of the hunt will glorify the hunter" not on this list?

Because its origin cannot be traced to a specific language. Chinua Achebe called it a great proverb in a 1994 Paris Review interview, and argued that storytelling should show the agony and bravery of the lions as well. No collection used for this article ties it to a particular people, so it falls below the standard of the other ten.

How many African proverbs have been written down?

No complete count exists. Single collections hold thousands: 3,600 Twi proverbs in Christaller's 1879 collection, more than 4,000 Kinyarwanda proverbs in Crépeau and Bizimana, and 4,800 Oromo proverbs in Cotter. A 2019 Afriprov inventory listed 131 collections from 103 African languages and dialects in 25 countries, held in a single library in Nairobi.

Key Sources

Other sources are named in brackets in the text. All pages pulled October 28, 2026.

• Bibliothèque nationale de France, "Papyrus Prisse: le plus vieux livre du monde" (fact sheet). https://classes.bnf.fr/pdf/fiche_Prisse2.pdf
• University of Illinois Center for African Studies, Swahili Proverbs: Methali za Kiswahili (entry 1063, citing Taylor 1891). https://swahiliproverbs.afrst.illinois.edu/constancy.html
• A. B. Ellis, The Yoruba-Speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast of West Africa (1894), chapter on proverbs, via Sacred Texts. https://sacred-texts.com/afr/yor/yor11.htm
• José Domingos Pedro, "L'Angola et les témoignages oraux liés à la traite négrière et à l'esclavage," Oralidad no. 10, UNESCO. https://www.lacult.unesco.org/docc/oralidad_10_33-38-l-angola-et-les-temoignages.pdf
• Constitution Hill, "A matter of life and death: S v Makwanyane & Another (1995)." https://ourconstitution.wethepeoplesa.org/?p=7278
• Afriprov, "September 2012: A log in the river will never be a crocodile, Gikuyu (Kenya) Proverb." https://afriprov.tangaza.ac.ke/september-2012-a-log-in-the-river-will-never-be-a-crocodile-gikuyu-kenya-proverb/