A debt may get mouldy, but it never decays.
CHINUA ACHEBENow one of the changes that must come to Africa is the idea of limited rule, I mean in term of how long one leader can stay in power. The era of president for life is not gone yet but it is on its way out and that is one of the problems with Mugabe and others.
More Chinua Achebe Quotes
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If you don’t like someone’s story, write your own.
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There is nothing to fear from someone who shouts.
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The singer should sing well even if it is merely to himself, rather than dance badly for the whole world.
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No man however great is greater than his people.
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The lizard that jumped from a high Iroko tree to the ground said he would praise himself if no-one else did.
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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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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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In dealing with a man who thinks you are a fool, it is good sometimes to remind him that you know what he knows but have chosen to appear foolish for the sake of peace.
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Most writers who are beginners, if they are honest with themselves, will admit that they are praying for a readership as they begin to write. But it should be the quality of the craft, not the audience, that should be the greatest motivating factor.
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The price a world language must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of use.
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Every generation must find its mission and fulfill it, as Fanon said – or betray it. So it is not something that you can write up on the wall, saying this is what has to be done. Every generation has to discover what it needs to do.
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A man of worth never gets up to unsay what he said yesterday.
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The world is like a Mask dancing. If you want to see it well, you do not stand in one place.
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It is the story that owns and directs us. It is the thing that makes us different from cattle; it is the mark on the face that sets one people apart from their neighbors.
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If a child washed his hands, he could eat with kings.
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The sun will shine on those who stand before it shines on those who kneel under them.
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And 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.
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An angry man is always a stupid man.
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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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Every lizard lies on its belly, so we cannot tell which has a belly-ache
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When mother-cow is chewing grass its young ones watch its mouth
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Privilege, you see, is one of the great adversaries of the imagination; it spreads a thick layer of adipose tissue over our sensitivity.
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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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Now one of the changes that must come to Africa is the idea of limited rule, I mean in term of how long one leader can stay in power. The era of president for life is not gone yet but it is on its way out and that is one of the problems with Mugabe and others.
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One of the truest tests of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised.
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I think back to the old people I knew when I was growing up, and they always seemed larger than life.
CHINUA ACHEBE