Chic African Culture Africa Factbook

Your lips are your enemy African proverbs

Here are 30 clear ancestral enemy African proverbs and sayings on love, hate, war and peace; the messages are clear.


Strong black women 1939 Madagascar Island
1939 Madagascar Island

African proverbs are common African sayings used by honored ancestry. The African proverb is not only used by regular peoples but also by the wisest and brightest of world scholars.

By using African proverbs, parents encourage their children, teachers instructed their pupils, authors impressed their readers, orators moved their auditors and preachers warned and guided their congregations in ways of uprightness and truth.

Leaders of men in all departments of life have used African proverbs with confidence and power and quoted them freely in their meetings and counsels. African proverbs have enriched the tales of travelers, strengthened the convictions of moralists, been received as warnings by the wayward, furnished rules of conduct for tradesmen consoled the downtrodden and depressed and stimulated the young to an earnest endeavor.

In ancient times, the influence of African proverbs over the hearts and lives of kinsmen was second only to the words from God. Few people dared to question the African proverb truthfulness and authority. African proverbs enabled them not only to win their independence but to overcome the many trials and disappointments inseparable from the task of building up a new kingdom.

Through African Proverbs as through African folklore, songs, traditions, rhymes, superstitions, and customs, we trace the moral and ethical development of African wisdom and learn the workings of the mind.

They are the wisdom of the ages, but their wisdom is not found in their depth of thought or breadth of vision but rather in what Samuel Taylor Coleridge called their common sense in an uncommon degree. Their wisdom is not the wisdom of the schools but of the village, the farm, and the elder.

Kenyan African sisters 1920
Kenyan African sisters 1920

Thirty ancestral African proverbs and sayings on love, hate, war, and peace.


  • Optimism leads to riches and pessimism leads to poverty. - Ghanaian Proverb
  • A man dies, but his word lives forever. - Sudanese Proverb
  • Your lips are your enemy. – Ethiopian Proverb
  • If you want to eat honey, follow the bees. - South African Proverb
  • If generously shared, a flea can be bitten twice. - Ghanaian Proverb
  • You will die poor if you rely on relatives. – Rwandan Proverb
  • One should either become a pillar or lean against one. – Ethiopian Proverb
  • A wise man plans for tomorrow, a fool plans only for today. - Ugandan Proverb
  • The patient person eats ripe fruit. - Ghanaian Proverb
  • Learn politeness from the impolite. – Egyptian Proverb

Read The Man Who Knew Everything African Folklore Story

When a king has good counselors, his reign is peaceful. - Ghanaian Proverb
Read:
It is well with my soul African proverbs
  • An Army of sheep led by a lion can defeat an Army of lions led by a sheep. Kenyan Proverb
  • A large chair does not make a king. - South Sudanese Proverb
  • The way a chief acts affects the entire village. - Ugandan Proverb
  • A king cannot reign without the support of the elders. - Burundian Proverb
  • Words of a good King do not lock all the doors; they leave the right door open. – Zambian proverb
  • When there is peace in the country, the chief does not carry a shield. - Ugandan Proverb
  • The wise chief does not eat from two sides. - Malawian Proverb
  • He who fears the sun will not become chief. - Ugandan Proverb
  • When a king has good counselors, his reign is peaceful. - Ghanaian Proverb
  • When you befriend a chief, remember that he sits on a rope. – Ugandan proverb
  • The sole of the foot is exposed to all the dirt of the road. - Malawian Proverb
  • Wisdom is not in the eye, but in the head. – eSwatini Proverb
  • A person being prepared beforehand is better than after-reflection. – The Gambia Proverb
  • A sharp word is as tough as a bowstring. – Togolese Proverb
  • He who forgives ends the quarrel. – Liberian Proverb
  • Throats are alike in swallowing. – Tanzanian Proverb
  • A sharp word cannot be cured. – eSwatini Proverb
  • If you seek to obtain by force, what God has not given you will not receive it– Ghanaian saying
A man profits more by the spectacle of a fool than by the speeches of the wise. ~ African Proverb

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