There is nothing to fear from someone who shouts.
CHINUA ACHEBEAnd theories are no more than fictions which help us to make sense of experience and which are subject to disconfirmation when their explanations are no longer adequate.
More Chinua Achebe Quotes
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A man who does not lick his lips, can he blame the harmattan for drying them?
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No man however great is greater than his people.
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A goat does not eat into a hen’s stomach no matter how friendly the two may be.
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The man that brings ant-infested faggots into his hut should not grumble when lizards begin to pay him a visit.
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Only the story can continue beyond the war and the warrior. The story outlives the sound of the war drum… The story is our escort. Without it we are blind… It is the thing that sets us apart from cattle.
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A coward may cover the ground with his words but when the time comes to fight he runs away.
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It is the storyteller who makes us what we are, who creates history. The storyteller creates the memory that the survivors must have – otherwise their surviving would have no meaning.
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In fact, I thought that Christianity was very a good and a very valuable thing for us. But after a while, I began to feel that the story that I was told about this religion wasn’t perhaps completely whole, that something was left out.
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Dancing is very important nowadays. No girl will look at you if you can’t dance.
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When a tradition gathers enough strength to go on for centuries, you don’t just turn it off one day.
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When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground.
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Women and music should not be dated.
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We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own. The Igbo, always practical, put it concretely in their proverb Onye ji onye n’ani ji onwe ya: ‘He who will hold another down in the mud must stay in the mud to keep him down.’
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One reason why I am quite angry with what is happening in Nigeria today is that everything has collapsed. If I decide to go back now, there will be so many problems – where will I find the physical therapy and other things that I now require?
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Nigeria is what it is because its leaders are not what they should be.
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A disease that has never been seen before cannot be cured with every-day herbs.
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My weapon is literature.
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When old people speak it is not because of the sweetness of words in our mouths; it is because we see something which you do not see.
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When I began going to school and learned to read, I encountered stories of other people and other lands.
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A functioning, robust democracy requires a healthy educated, participatory followership, and an educated, morally grounded leadership.
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We shall all live. We pray for life, children, a good harvest and happiness. You will have what is good for you and I will have what is good for me. Let the kite perch and let the egret perch too. If one says no to the other, let his wing break.
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Nobody can teach me who I am.
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The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.
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A man of worth never gets up to unsay what he said yesterday.
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Storytellers are a threat. They threaten all champions of control, they frighten usurpers of the right-to-freedom of the human spirit — in state, in church or mosque, in party congress, in the university or wherever.
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What a man does not know is greater than he.
CHINUA ACHEBE