Every generation must find its mission and fulfill it, as Fanon said – or betray it. So it is not something that you can write up on the wall, saying this is what has to be done. Every generation has to discover what it needs to do.
CHINUA ACHEBEAnd 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.
More Chinua Achebe Quotes
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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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It has always been quite apparent to me that no important story can fail to tell us something of value to us.
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An angry man is always a stupid man.
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Wisdom is like a goatskin bag; every man carries his own.
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A disease that has never been seen before cannot be cured with every-day herbs.
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Just think of the work you’ve set yourself to do, and do it as well as you can.
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If a child washed his hands, he could eat with kings.
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I am against people reaping where they have not sown. But we have a saying that if you want to eat a toad you should look for a fat and juicy one.
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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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If you only hear one side of the story, you have no understanding at all.
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Women and music should not be dated.
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No matter how prosperous a man was, if he was unable to rule his women and his children (and especially his women) he was not really a man.
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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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Do not be in a hurry to rush into the pleasures of the world like the young antelope who danced herself lame when the main dance was yet to come.
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There is that great proverb – that until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.
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When a mad man walks naked, it is his kinsmen who feel shame, not himself.
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Whatever music you beat on your drum there is somebody who can dance to it.
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When I began going to school and learned to read, I encountered stories of other people and other lands.
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One reason why I am quite angry with what is happening in Nigeria today is that everything has collapsed. If I decide to go back now, there will be so many problems – where will I find the physical therapy and other things that I now require?
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What a man does not know is greater than he.
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A coward may cover the ground with his words but when the time comes to fight he runs away.
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Now one of the changes that must come to Africa is the idea of limited rule, I mean in term of how long one leader can stay in power. The era of president for life is not gone yet but it is on its way out and that is one of the problems with Mugabe and others.
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If I hold her hand she says, ‘Don’t touch!’ If I hold her foot she says ‘Don’t touch!’ But when I hold her waist-beads she pretends not to know.
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The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.
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As long as one people sit on another and are deaf to their cry, so long will understanding and peace elude all of us.
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People go to Africa and confirm what they already have in their heads and so they fail to see what is there in front of them.
CHINUA ACHEBE