It’s the place to begin, always — to return to home, literally.
WOLE SOYINKASee, 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.
More Wole Soyinka Quotes
-
-
You have the entire gamut of human experience captured in the mythology of the Yoruba. This is what makes the Yoruba mythology a natural source material for me in my creative endeavours.
WOLE SOYINKA -
For me, a writer is already being the deuce of his mission, his occupation to society.
WOLE SOYINKA -
We do not ask the mountain’s aid to crack a walnut.
WOLE SOYINKA -
Alfred Nobel regretted that his invention, dynamite, was converted to degrading use, hence his creation of the Nobel Prize, as the humanist counter to the destructive power of his genius.
WOLE SOYINKA -
The man dies in all those that keep silent.
WOLE SOYINKA -
I can look violence in the face and either reject or accept it.
WOLE SOYINKA -
I am convinced that Nigeria would have been a more highly developed country without the oil. I wished we’d never smelled the fumes of petroleum.
WOLE SOYINKA -
The writer is the visionary of his people… He anticipates, he warns.
WOLE SOYINKA -
You cannot live a normal existence if you haven’t taken care of a problem that affects your life and affects the lives of others, values that you hold which in fact define your very existence.
WOLE SOYINKA -
I believe that each writer must decide in which language he or she is most comfortable.
WOLE SOYINKA -
I began writing early – very, very early… I was already writing short stories for the radio and selling poems to poetry and art festivals; I was involved in school plays; I wrote essays, so there was no definite moment when I said, ‘Now I’m a writer.’ I’ve always been a writer.
WOLE SOYINKA -
Intolerance has become, I think, the reigning ideology of the world today, the intolerance versus intolerance and it’s taken on lethal proportions.
WOLE SOYINKA -
Well, the first thing is that truth and power for me form an antithesis, an antagonism, which will hardly ever be resolved. I can define in fact, can simplify the history of human society, the evolution of human society, as a contest between power and freedom.
WOLE SOYINKA -
A human feast is an indifferent morsel to a god.
WOLE SOYINKA -
There is only one home to the life of a river-mussel; there is only one home to the life of a tortoise; there is only one shell to the soul of man: there is only one world to the spirit of our race. If that world leaves its course and smashes on boulders of the great void, whose world will give us shelter?
WOLE SOYINKA