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When I began going to school and learned to read, I encountered stories of other people and other lands.

Chinua Achebe

Let the kite perch and let the eagle perch too – If one says no to the other, let his wing break.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Break Oneself Wings
When we are comfortable and inattentive, we run the risk of committing grave injustices absentmindedly.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Attention Comfortable Commitment Grave Risk Run
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.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Change Ideas Leadership Limitation Power Problem Stay
Every lizard lies on its belly, so we cannot tell which has a belly-ache
CHINUA ACHEBE

Animal Lying Philosophy
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.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Control Freedom Human Religion Spirit Threat
Literature, whether handed down by word or mouth or in print, gives us a second handle on reality.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Hands Literature Ourselves Reality
If a child washed his hands, he could eat with kings.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Children Deep Eat Hands King Value Wash
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
Wisdom is like a goatskin bag; every man carries his own.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Carry Himself Man Wisdom
We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own. The Igbo, always practical, put it concretely in their proverb Onye ji onye n’ani ji onwe ya: ‘He who will hold another down in the mud must stay in the mud to keep him down.’
CHINUA ACHEBE

Himself Humanity Moral Practical Stay Value
Privilege, you see, is one of the great adversaries of the imagination; it spreads a thick layer of adipose tissue over our sensitivity.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Greatness Imagination Man Privilege Yourself
One of the truest tests of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Compromise Integrity Refusal Test True
We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Humanity Ourselves Value
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.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Expression Feeling Story Talk
I think back to the old people I knew when I was growing up, and they always seemed larger than life.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Growth Life Old People Thinking
Africa is to Europe as the picture is to Dorian Gray-a carrier onto whom the master unloads his physical & moral deformities.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Moral Photograph Physical

When I began going to school and learned to read, I encountered stories of other people and other lands.

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When I began going to school and learned to read, I encountered stories of other people and other lands.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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