For me, justice is the prime condition of humanity.
WOLE SOYINKAIt is the human potentials that interest me. I travel and everywhere I go I am amazed at the presence of Nigerians. The intelligence, integrity, productivity, initiative.
More Wole Soyinka Quotes
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. . . as far as the regime is concerned, well, the play is sheer terror for them. Because they feel, How dare – how dare anybody lift his or her voice in criticism against us? We have the guns. Their level of paranoia and power-drunkenness is unbelievable.
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I consider the process of gestation just as important as when you’re actually sitting down putting words to the paper.
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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.
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A tiger does not proclaim his tigritude, he pounces.
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But the ultimate lesson is just sit down and write. That’s all.
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Intolerance has become, I think, the reigning ideology of the world today, the intolerance versus intolerance and it’s taken on lethal proportions.
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We do not ask the mountain’s aid to crack a walnut.
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Governance can dig itself into a huge hole and not even know it’s in there.
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When I say war, I’m not talking about mental war; I’m talking about totally eliminating the obstacles to transformation of our children.
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My definition of slavery is the deprivation of human volition, any form of relationship between two peoples which is based on the deprivation of volition of one side.
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Culture is a matrix of infinite possibilities and choices. From within the same culture matrix we can extract arguments and strategies for the degradation and ennoblement of our species, for its enslavement or liberation, for the suppression of its productive potential or its enhancement.
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The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism.
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I can look violence in the face and either reject or accept it.
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What I teach is literary criticism and comparative literature and so on and that’s my function, but from time to time it’s possible for me actually to help a writer. I read something and something strikes me then, I feel I can talk to that writer about it.
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Be yourself. Ultimately just be yourself.
WOLE SOYINKA






