I think not just Nigeria but I think the whole of Africa has to turn back to the rural areas and that’s where the majority of the citizens are and that’s where the engine of of development has to be found.
CHINUA ACHEBEWhen I began going to school and learned to read, I encountered stories of other people and other lands.
More Chinua Achebe Quotes
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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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You do not know me,’ said Tortoise. ‘I am a changed man. I have learned that a man who makes trouble for others makes trouble for himself.
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The lizard that jumped from a high Iroko tree to the ground said he would praise himself if no-one else did.
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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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It is praiseworthy to be brave and fearless, but sometimes it is better to be a coward. We often stand in the compound of a coward to point at the ruins where a brave man used to live.
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Procrastination is a lazy man’s apology.
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The only thing we have learnt from experience is that we learn nothing from experience.
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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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He is a fool who treats his brother worse than a stranger.
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Art is man’s constant effort to create for himself a different order of reality from that which is given to him.
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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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Whenever you see a toad jumping in broad daylight, then know that something is after its life.
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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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The problem with leaderless uprisings taking over is that you don’t always know what you get at the other end. If you are not careful you could replace a bad government with one much worse!
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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.
CHINUA ACHEBE