The Bible in translation is being read to thousands and thousands in Africa. It is an integral part of their functioning and the way they look at the world.
NGUGI WA THIONG'OLife, struggle, even amidst pain and blood and poverty, seemed beautiful.
More Ngugi wa Thiong'o Quotes
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There is no way we can survive as a nation in the world without finding unity.
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Christianity and Western civilization-what countless crimes have been committed in thy name!
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I think a repressive regime always fears people who are awakened – particularly ordinary people. If they are awakened, I think governments all over the world feel uncomfortable about that; they want to be in control.
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What’s good about writing is that when you write novels or fiction, people can see that the problems in one region are similar to problems in another region.
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Our lives are a battlefield on which is fought a continuous war between the forces that are pledged to confirm our humanity and those determined to dismantle it.
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They want to be the ones telling people: “This is what we have done in history” but when people begin to say, “No this is what we have done in history” it’s a different thing.
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It was a revelation for me, in a practical sense, that you could write in an African language and still reach an audience beyond that language through the art of translation.
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Through the act of translation we break out of linguistic confinement and reach many other communities.
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How could Europe lord it over a continent ten times its size? Why does needy Africa continue to let its wealth meet the needs of those outside its borders and then follow behind with hands outstretched for a loan of the very wealth it let go?
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The Bible affects everybody’s life who is a Christian, from the middle class in Europe to the peasant in Africa and Asia.
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The same questions are there in Native American languages, they’re there in native Canadian languages, they’re there is some marginalized European languages, like say, Irish.
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What is translated from English and into English – and in what quantities – is a question of power.
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So what I thought was just an African problem or issue is actually a global phenomenon about relationships of power between languages and cultures.
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The Pan-Africanism that envisaged the ideal of wholeness was gradually cut down to the size of a continent, then a nation, a region, an ethnos, a clan, and even a village in some instances But Pan-Africanism has not outlived its mission.
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Why did Africa let Europe cart away millions of Africa’s souls from the continent to the four corners of the wind?
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