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When a tradition gathers enough strength to go on for centuries, you don’t just turn it off one day.

Chinua Achebe

Every generation must recognize and embrace the task it is peculiarly designed by history and by providence to perform.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Design Embrace Generation History Performance Recognition Task
An artist in my view is always afraid of extremists; he is always afraid of those who claim to have found the ultimate solution to any question.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Afraid Artist Question Solution Ultimate View
We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Humanity Ourselves Value
Procrastination is a lazy man’s apology.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Apology Man Perspective Procrastination
When brothers fight to death a stranger inherit their father’s estate.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Brother Death Fight Profit Stranger
Only the story can continue beyond the war and the warrior. The story outlives the sound of the war drum… The story is our escort. Without it we are blind… It is the thing that sets us apart from cattle.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Beyond Blind Cattle Ourselves Warrior
Most writers who are beginners, if they are honest with themselves, will admit that they are praying for a readership as they begin to write. But it should be the quality of the craft, not the audience, that should be the greatest motivating factor.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Audience Beginning Factor Praying Writing
Each of my books is different. Deliberately. I wanted to create my society, my people, in their fullness.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Book Creation Different Myself People
A man who pays respect to the great paves the way for his own greatness
CHINUA ACHEBE

Character Ethnicity Greatness Man Pay Respect
It is the storyteller who makes us what we are, who creates history. The storyteller creates the memory that the survivors must have – otherwise their surviving would have no meaning.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Creation History Meaning Storyteller Survival
When suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Door Hard Time Himself Knock Suffering Worry
The only thing we have learnt from experience is that we learn nothing from experience.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Experience Learning Philosophy Wisdom
The price a world language must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of use.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Different Kind Language Price Submission World
When I began going to school and learned to read, I encountered stories of other people and other lands.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Beginning Education Land Learning Myself People
The damage done in one year can sometimes take ten or twenty years to repair.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Damage Repair Time
The impatient idealist says: ‘Give me a place to stand and I shall move the earth.’ But such a place does not exist. We all have to stand on the earth itself and go with her at her pace.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Earth Existence Ideal Myself Place

When a tradition gathers enough strength to go on for centuries, you don’t just turn it off one day.

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When a tradition gathers enough strength to go on for centuries, you don’t just turn it off one day.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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