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?
NGUGI WA THIONG'OFor me, being in prison writing in an African language was a way of saying: “Even if you put me in prison, I will keep on writing in the language which made you put me in prison.”
More Ngugi wa Thiong'o Quotes
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I’m writing for those people in Kenya, but in Irvine and in New York.
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Seen as an economic, political, cultural, and psychological re-membering vision, it should continue to guide remembering practices
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If poverty was to be sold three cents today, i can’t buy it.
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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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If a novel is written in a certain language with certain characters from a particular community and the story is very good or illuminating, then that work is translated into the language of another community.
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Then they begin to see through their language that the problems described there are the same as the problems they are having. They can identify with characters from another language group.
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The Bible has affected their lives, but in translation, since they do not read the Bible in the original Greek or Hebrew.
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How did we arrive at this, that the best leader is the one that knows how to beg for a share of what he has already given away at the price of a broken tool? Where is the future of Africa?
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A person who acquires English has access to all the things that that language makes possible.
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I was wondering why I was put in prison for working in an African language when I had not been put in prison for working in English. So really, in prison I started thinking more seriously about the relation between language and power.
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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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We can appreciate each other’s languages. And the question of being uncomfortable about our languages would go away.
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We think of politics in terms of power and who has the power. Politics is the end to which that power is put.
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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.
NGUGI WA THIONG'O