black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

When suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool.

Chinua Achebe

If a child washed his hands, he could eat with kings.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Children Deep Eat Hands King Value Wash
Once you allow yourself to identify with the people in a story, then you might begin to see yourself in that story even if on the surface it’s far removed from your situation.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Beginning Identify People Removal Situation Story Yourself
As long as one people sit on another and are deaf to their cry, so long will understanding and peace elude all of us.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Oneself Peace People Understand
Nobody can teach me who I am.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Myself Philosophy Teaching
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.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Audience Beginning Factor Praying Writing
The singer should sing well even if it is merely to himself, rather than dance badly for the whole world.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Dance Singing World
The lizard that jumped from a high Iroko tree to the ground said he would praise himself if no-one else did.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Deep Lizard Philosophy Praise
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.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Creation History Meaning Storyteller Survival
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.’
CHINUA ACHEBE

Himself Humanity Moral Practical Stay Value
Among the Igbo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Art Conversation Eat Word
There is a moral obligation, I think, not to ally oneself with power against the powerless.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Moral Obligation Power Thinking
We do not seek to hurt any man, but if any man seeks to hurt us may he break his neck.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Break Hurt Man Neck Seek
No matter how prosperous a man was, if he was unable to rule his women and his children (and especially his women) he was not really a man.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Man Prosperity Rule Woman
We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Humanity Ourselves Value
Charity is the opium of the privileged.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Charity Opium Privilege
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.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Experience Fiction Subject Theory

When suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

When suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Chinua Achebe Quotes