Aminu Kano

"One must scratch that part of the body or mind that itches."

"The road to freedom is full of thorns and fire, yet happy is he who follows it!"

"I am more interested in the purpose of government than its mechanics–though the means should at least be good enough to lead to the ends desired."

"Anyone who wants to be a leader must be the servant, not the boss, of those he wants to serve."

"If we go on foot, we will not walk, we will run. And if we fall, we will pick ourselves up and run again. But mark you, we will not go on foot. You might tell us to go by camel, or horse, but we will even skip the motor car and go by plane. And the British had best not deny us the choice of our means of transportation, no matter how fast."

"I hated government that sat on people"

"We [at NEPU] interpret democracy in its more traditional, radical sense, and that is the rule of the common people, the poor, the illiterate, while our opponents (the NPC) interpret it in its modern Tory sense, and that is the rule of the enlightened and prosperous minority in the supposed interest of the common people."

"...the economy is a living thing, if you play with it, it can kill you."

"What Nigerians want is really very peddling things, now for example what is constitution, what is independence, what is 1st October if I go to bed hungry, or the next morning I wake up without breakfast, for my children to go to school without a meal?"

"The word 'tribe' is insulting. It is the European who refers to us as tribes. Such words should be banned. I would rather say I come from Kano State than say I am Fulani...."

"I have been a socialist all along. I discovered early in life that a lot of the codes of Islam are patterned along socialist lines."

"What we have to do in this country is to try as much as possible not to be identified with any socialist camp but only that of the Nigerian experience. . . . [My brand of socialism is ] Nigerian socialism. To achieve it, we should take into account our traditional way of life, our temper, our economic potentialities and resources, our attitude to family life, our attitude to work and international good neighbourliness. These are what will give us the ingredients for our own kind of socialism. This will make us avoid the mistake of copying other people's arrangements which may be unsuitable for our particular situation."