When a mad man walks naked, it is his kinsmen who feel shame, not himself.
CHINUA ACHEBEI think back to the old people I knew when I was growing up, and they always seemed larger than life.
More Chinua Achebe Quotes
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If one finger brings oil it soils the others.
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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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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.
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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.
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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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One of the truest tests of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised.
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In dealing with a man who thinks you are a fool, it is good sometimes to remind him that you know what he knows but have chosen to appear foolish for the sake of peace.
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I prefer to go on trying all kinds of things, not to be told, This is the way it is done.
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My son even if you want to fall, at least fall where your bones can be gathered.
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We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own.
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Most writers who are beginners, if they are honest with themselves, will admit that they are praying for a readership as they begin to write. But it should be the quality of the craft, not the audience, that should be the greatest motivating factor.
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We do not seek to hurt any man, but if any man seeks to hurt us may he break his neck.
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The damage done in one year can sometimes take ten or twenty years to repair.
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When a coward sees a man he can beat he becomes hungry for a fight.
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Nigeria is what it is because its leaders are not what they should be.
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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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If you don’t like someone’s story, write your own.
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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.
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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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There is a moral obligation, I think, not to ally oneself with power against the powerless.
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Women and music should not be dated.
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The man that brings ant-infested faggots into his hut should not grumble when lizards begin to pay him a visit.
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A man of worth never gets up to unsay what he said yesterday.
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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.’
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When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground.
CHINUA ACHEBE