Romance is the sweetening of the soul With fragrance offered by the stricken heart.
WOLE SOYINKANo man beholds his mother’s womb Yet who denies it’s there? Coiled To the navel of the world is that Endless cord that links us all To the great Origin. If I lose my way. The trailing cord will bring me to the roots.
More Wole Soyinka Quotes
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Governance can dig itself into a huge hole and not even know it’s in there.
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I rarely use mythology for its own sake because, as a theatre person, the mythological figures are in fact humanity to the ninth degree and Yoruba mythology in particular has fascination of being one of the most humanised mythologies in the world.
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The writer is the visionary of his people… He anticipates, he warns.
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I consider the process of gestation just as important as when you’re actually sitting down putting words to the paper.
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When you are looking for corruption, you should look at the entire stratum of the society, while some forms of corruption are direct, others are indirect.
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There is something really horrific for any human being who feels he is being consumed by other people.
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Let’s say there are prospects for a new Nigeria, but I don’t think we have a new Nigeria yet.
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I don’t know any other way to live but to wake up everyday armed with my convictions, not yielding them to the threat of danger and to the power and force of people who might despise me.
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I said: “A tiger does not proclaim his tigritude, he pounces”. In other words: a tiger does not stand in the forest and say: “I am a tiger”. When you pass where the tiger has walked before, you see the skeleton of the duiker, you know that some tigritude has been emanated there.
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There’s a lot of insincerity about the actions of our legislators; they create distractions – like this anti-gay law you alluded to – and try to mobilise, to exacerbate people’s emotions. Until the legislators started making laws, people minded, generally, their own business.
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But the ultimate lesson is just sit down and write. That’s all.
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We do not ask the mountain’s aid to crack a walnut.
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A tiger does not proclaim his tigritude, he pounces.
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You have the entire gamut of human experience captured in the mythology of the Yoruba. This is what makes the Yoruba mythology a natural source material for me in my creative endeavours.
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For me, justice is the prime condition of humanity.
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My definition of slavery is the deprivation of human volition, any form of relationship between two peoples which is based on the deprivation of volition of one side.
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Don’t take shadows too seriously. Reality is your only safety. Continue to reject illusion.
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Sadness is twilight’s kiss on earth.
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I never hesitated, as a student, in embracing the necessity of violence. In South Africa, I didn’t just accept it; I looked forward to it as a mission.
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The youth should come together to challenge the status quo. They must not give up.
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The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism.
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Each time I think Ive created time for myself, along comes a throwback to disrupt my private space.
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We all have our individual artistic temperaments as well as partisanships in creative directions. And we have strong opinions on the merits of the products of our occupation.
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Intolerance has become, I think, the reigning ideology of the world today, the intolerance versus intolerance and it’s taken on lethal proportions.
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I have no money to give to you but I have ideas and organizational capacity.
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Arts and the Sciences are a natural symbiosis. They stem from the same human existential impulse – exploration. Exploration of what lies beneath the surface, and re-confuguration of elements of what we call reality.
WOLE SOYINKA