A person who acquires English has access to all the things that that language makes possible.
NGUGI WA THIONG'OPeople went to war as a result of it and even today, every Sunday.
More Ngugi wa Thiong'o Quotes
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We can appreciate each other’s languages. And the question of being uncomfortable about our languages would go away.
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I’m writing for those people in Kenya, but in Irvine and in New York.
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So what I thought was just an African problem or issue is actually a global phenomenon about relationships of power between languages and cultures.
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The Bible has affected their lives, but in translation, since they do not read the Bible in the original Greek or Hebrew.
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I think a repressive regime always fears people who are awakened – particularly ordinary people. If they are awakened, I think governments all over the world feel uncomfortable about that; they want to be in control.
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The Pan-Africanism that envisaged the ideal of wholeness was gradually cut down to the size of a continent, then a nation, a region, an ethnos, a clan, and even a village in some instances But Pan-Africanism has not outlived its mission.
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There is no way we can survive as a nation in the world without finding unity.
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How did we arrive at this, that the best leader is the one that knows how to beg for a share of what he has already given away at the price of a broken tool? Where is the future of Africa?
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Those who strive to build a protective wall around it, and those who wish to pull it down; those who seek to mould it and those committed to breaking it up; those who aim to open our eyes, to make us see the light and look to tomorrow […] and those who wish to lull us into closing our eyes
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Of course it’s very, very important for me to feel Kenya, to feel, every day, this is where images come from. So to be taken away from that by political pressure or other means – one is taken away from the area, which is the basis of inspiration – is difficult.
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Seen as an economic, political, cultural, and psychological re-membering vision, it should continue to guide remembering practices
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I was wondering why I was put in prison for working in an African language when I had not been put in prison for working in English. So really, in prison I started thinking more seriously about the relation between language and power.
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For me, being in prison writing in an African language was a way of saying: “Even if you put me in prison, I will keep on writing in the language which made you put me in prison.”
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We think of politics in terms of power and who has the power. Politics is the end to which that power is put.
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Our lives are a battlefield on which is fought a continuous war between the forces that are pledged to confirm our humanity and those determined to dismantle it.
NGUGI WA THIONG'O