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.
CHINUA ACHEBEPeople 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.
CHINUA ACHEBEThe 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!
CHINUA ACHEBEEach of my books is different. Deliberately. I wanted to create my society, my people, in their fullness.
CHINUA ACHEBEIn 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 ACHEBEThere is a moral obligation, I think, not to ally oneself with power against the powerless.
CHINUA ACHEBEA disease that has never been seen before cannot be cured with every-day herbs.
CHINUA ACHEBELiterature, whether handed down by word or mouth or in print, gives us a second handle on reality.
CHINUA ACHEBEWhen we are comfortable and inattentive, we run the risk of committing grave injustices absentmindedly.
CHINUA ACHEBEWe 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 ACHEBEArt is man’s constant effort to create for himself a different order of reality from that which is given to him.
CHINUA ACHEBEI 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.
CHINUA ACHEBEThe lizard that jumped from a high Iroko tree to the ground said he would praise himself if no-one else did.
CHINUA ACHEBEWhile we do our good works let us not forget that the real solution lies in a world in which charity will have become unnecessary.
CHINUA ACHEBEMy weapon is literature.
CHINUA ACHEBEIf 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 ACHEBEIn 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.
CHINUA ACHEBE