I don’t know any other way to live but to wake up everyday armed with my convictions, not yielding them to the threat of danger and to the power and force of people who might despise me.
WOLE SOYINKAMy 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.
More Wole Soyinka Quotes
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The writer is the visionary of his people… He anticipates, he warns.
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But when you’re deprived of it for a lengthy period then you value human companionship. But you have to survive and so you devise all kinds of mental exercises and it’s amazing.
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When you are looking for corruption, you should look at the entire stratum of the society, while some forms of corruption are direct, others are indirect.
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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.
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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.
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Sadness is twilight’s kiss on earth.
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Books and all forms of writing are terror to those who wish to suppress the truth.
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Everybody knows that fraternities are a normal culture in all colleges. It exists in all colleges. President Clinton was a member of a fraternity. In fact, anybody who goes to College in the United States is a member of a College fraternity. There is absolutely nothing evil or occultic about fraternity.
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We live in a materialist world, and materialism appeals so strongly to humanity, no matter where.
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But the ultimate lesson is just sit down and write. That’s all.
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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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Let’s say there are prospects for a new Nigeria, but I don’t think we have a new Nigeria yet.
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Intolerance has always been with us, you know. The moment you have ideology, we have intolerance, whether it’s the secular ideology or, you know ideocratic ideology, which always brings with it some kind of intolerance.
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Romance is the sweetening of the soul With fragrance offered by the stricken heart.
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Mythology can be used, and has been used, even to re-state, you know, the very urgent problems of the world.
WOLE SOYINKA