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.
WOLE SOYINKABut theater, because of its nature, both text, images, multimedia effects, has a wider base of communication with an audience. That’s why I call it the most social of the various art forms.
More Wole Soyinka Quotes
-
-
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.
WOLE SOYINKA -
But when you’re deprived of it for a lengthy period then you value human companionship. But you have to survive and so you devise all kinds of mental exercises and it’s amazing.
WOLE SOYINKA -
I am a very curious person; I’ll always ask: is this thing true, is it not true? And I use my own means to investigate and come to my conclusion.
WOLE SOYINKA -
My father used to tell me stories before I fell asleep. When the children would gather, at a certain point, I had a tendency to make up my own elementary variations on stories I had heard, or to invent totally new ones.
WOLE SOYINKA -
I believe that each writer must decide in which language he or she is most comfortable.
WOLE SOYINKA -
History teaches us to beware of the excitation of the liberated and the injustices that often accompany their righteous thirst for justice.
WOLE SOYINKA -
The hand that dips into the bottom of the pot will eat the biggest snail.
WOLE SOYINKA -
It’s the place to begin, always — to return to home, literally.
WOLE SOYINKA -
And gradually they’re beginning to recognize the fact that there’s nothing more secure than a democratic, accountable, and participatory form of government. But it’s sunk in only theoretically, it has not yet sunk in completely in practical terms.
WOLE SOYINKA -
I have one abiding religion-human liberty.
WOLE SOYINKA -
Intolerance has always been with us, you know. The moment you have ideology, we have intolerance, whether it’s the secular ideology or, you know ideocratic ideology, which always brings with it some kind of intolerance.
WOLE SOYINKA -
Don’t take shadows too seriously. Reality is your only safety. Continue to reject illusion.
WOLE SOYINKA -
My understanding of the creative process is simply that all cultures and all concerns meet at a certain point, the human point in which everything is related to one another. That has been my creative experience.
WOLE SOYINKA -
See, even despite pious statements to the contrary, much of the industrialized world has not yet come to terms with the recognition of the fallacy of what I call the strong man syndrome.
WOLE SOYINKA -
The writer is the visionary of his people… He anticipates, he warns.
WOLE SOYINKA