We live in a materialist world, and materialism appeals so strongly to humanity, no matter where.
WOLE SOYINKAHistory teaches us to beware of the excitation of the liberated and the injustices that often accompany their righteous thirst for justice.
More Wole Soyinka Quotes
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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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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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There’s a lot of insincerity about the actions of our legislators; they create distractions – like this anti-gay law you alluded to – and try to mobilise, to exacerbate people’s emotions. Until the legislators started making laws, people minded, generally, their own business.
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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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You have the entire gamut of human experience captured in the mythology of the Yoruba. This is what makes the Yoruba mythology a natural source material for me in my creative endeavours.
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To achieve any change in the minds of the youth, there must be reorientation in terms of materialistic tendencies, corruption and crime generally.
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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.
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I have no money to give to you but I have ideas and organizational capacity.
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Colonialism bred an innate arrogance, but when you undertake that sort of imperial adventure, that arrogance gives way to a feeling of accommodativeness. You take pride in your openness.
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But theater, because of its nature, both text, images, multimedia effects, has a wider base of communication with an audience. That’s why I call it the most social of the various art forms.
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The hand that dips into the bottom of the pot will eat the biggest snail.
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Writers are human. I shudder to think how I must sometimes appear to others.
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Arts and the Sciences are a natural symbiosis. They stem from the same human existential impulse – exploration. Exploration of what lies beneath the surface, and re-confuguration of elements of what we call reality.
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Sadness is twilight’s kiss on earth.
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Governance can dig itself into a huge hole and not even know it’s in there.
WOLE SOYINKA