Privilege, you see, is one of the great adversaries of the imagination; it spreads a thick layer of adipose tissue over our sensitivity.
CHINUA ACHEBENobody can teach me who I am. You can describe parts of me, but who I am – and what I need – is something I have to find out myself.
More Chinua Achebe Quotes
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Nigeria is what it is because its leaders are not what they should be.
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The sun will shine on those who stand before it shines on those who kneel under them.
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A functioning, robust democracy requires a healthy educated, participatory followership, and an educated, morally grounded leadership.
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No man however great is greater than his people.
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The only thing we have learnt from experience is that we learn nothing from experience.
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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.
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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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The world is large,” said Okonkwo. “I have even heard that in some tribes a man’s children belong to his wife and her family.” “That cannot be,” said Machi. “You might as well say that the woman lies on top of the man when they are making the babies.
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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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If you don’t like someone’s story, write your own.
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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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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.
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Every generation must recognize and embrace the task it is peculiarly designed by history and by providence to perform.
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The language of young men is pull down and destroy; but an old man speaks of conciliation.
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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.
CHINUA ACHEBE