In fact, I thought that Christianity was very a good and a very valuable thing for us. But after a while, I began to feel that the story that I was told about this religion wasn’t perhaps completely whole, that something was left out.
CHINUA ACHEBEThe 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.
More Chinua Achebe Quotes
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There is no story that is not true.
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A functioning, robust democracy requires a healthy educated, participatory followership, and an educated, morally grounded leadership.
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There is nothing to fear from someone who shouts.
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Whatever music you beat on your drum there is somebody who can dance to it.
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When old people speak it is not because of the sweetness of words in our mouths; it is because we see something which you do not see.
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It is the story that owns and directs us. It is the thing that makes us different from cattle; it is the mark on the face that sets one people apart from their neighbors.
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My weapon is literature.
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He is a fool who treats his brother worse than a stranger.
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Every lizard lies on its belly, so we cannot tell which has a belly-ache
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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.
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When a coward sees a man he can beat he becomes hungry for a fight.
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Once you allow yourself to identify with the people in a story, then you might begin to see yourself in that story even if on the surface it’s far removed from your situation.
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Storytellers are a threat. They threaten all champions of control, they frighten usurpers of the right-to-freedom of the human spirit — in state, in church or mosque, in party congress, in the university or wherever.
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If a child washed his hands, he could eat with kings.
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A man who pays respect to the great paves the way for his own greatness
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Every generation must recognize and embrace the task it is peculiarly designed by history and by providence to perform.
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A child cannot pay for its mother’s milk.
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And theories are no more than fictions which help us to make sense of experience and which are subject to disconfirmation when their explanations are no longer adequate.
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People say that if you find water rising up to your ankle, that’s the time to do something about it, not when it’s around your neck.
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If you don’t like someone’s story, write your own. If you don’t like what somebody says, say what it is you don’t like.
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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.
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No man however great is greater than his people.
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What a country needs to do is be fair to all its citizens – whether people are of a different ethnicity or gender.
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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.
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The price a world language must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of use.
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If you have leaders who are prepared to incite group against group it is very easy to manufacture reasons and excuses.
CHINUA ACHEBE