I am a very curious person; I’ll always ask: is this thing true, is it not true? And I use my own means to investigate and come to my conclusion.
WOLE SOYINKABe yourself. Ultimately just be yourself.
More Wole Soyinka Quotes
-
-
But the ultimate lesson is just sit down and write. That’s all.
WOLE SOYINKA -
Mythology can be used, and has been used, even to re-state, you know, the very urgent problems of the world.
WOLE SOYINKA -
Writers are human. I shudder to think how I must sometimes appear to others.
WOLE SOYINKA -
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.
WOLE SOYINKA -
To achieve any change in the minds of the youth, there must be reorientation in terms of materialistic tendencies, corruption and crime generally.
WOLE SOYINKA -
And gradually they’re beginning to recognize the fact that there’s nothing more secure than a democratic, accountable, and participatory form of government. But it’s sunk in only theoretically, it has not yet sunk in completely in practical terms.
WOLE SOYINKA -
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.
WOLE SOYINKA -
For me, a writer is already being the deuce of his mission, his occupation to society.
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 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.
WOLE SOYINKA -
I rarely use mythology for its own sake because, as a theatre person, the mythological figures are in fact humanity to the ninth degree and Yoruba mythology in particular has fascination of being one of the most humanised mythologies in the world.
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 -
History teaches us to beware of the excitation of the liberated and the injustices that often accompany their righteous thirst for justice.
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 -
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.
WOLE SOYINKA