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We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own.

Chinua Achebe

Only the story can continue beyond the war and the warrior. The story outlives the sound of the war drum… The story is our escort. Without it we are blind… It is the thing that sets us apart from cattle.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Beyond Blind Cattle Ourselves Warrior
The damage done in one year can sometimes take ten or twenty years to repair.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Damage Repair Time
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.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Audience Beginning Factor Praying Writing
My weapon is literature.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Literature Myself Weapon
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
In 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 ACHEBE

Fake Myself Religion Story Truth
When we are comfortable and inattentive, we run the risk of committing grave injustices absentmindedly.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Attention Comfortable Commitment Grave Risk Run
It is the storyteller who makes us what we are, who creates history. The storyteller creates the memory that the survivors must have – otherwise their surviving would have no meaning.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Creation History Meaning Storyteller Survival
A man who does not lick his lips, can he blame the harmattan for drying them?
CHINUA ACHEBE

Blame Dry Lips Man
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
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 ACHEBE

Discover Finding Fulfill Generation Mission Need
Just think of the work you’ve set yourself to do, and do it as well as you can.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Thinking Work Yourself
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.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Better Brave Coward Live Praise Worth
If one finger brings oil it soils the others.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Fingering Oneself
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 ACHEBE

Development Finding Rural Thinking
Among the Igbo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Art Conversation Eat Word

We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own.

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We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own.

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Popular Authors

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