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When we are comfortable and inattentive, we run the risk of committing grave injustices absentmindedly.

Chinua Achebe

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
If you have leaders who are prepared to incite group against group it is very easy to manufacture reasons and excuses.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Easy Leadership Manufacture Preparation Reason Yourself
Art is man’s constant effort to create for himself a different order of reality from that which is given to him.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Art Creation Effort Himself Reality
Literature, whether handed down by word or mouth or in print, gives us a second handle on reality.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Hands Literature Ourselves Reality
The lizard that jumped from a high Iroko tree to the ground said he would praise himself if no-one else did.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Deep Lizard Philosophy Praise
Whenever you see a toad jumping in broad daylight, then know that something is after its life.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Animal Frog Known Life See Yourself
Women and music should not be dated.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Date Music Woman
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.’
CHINUA ACHEBE

Himself Humanity Moral Practical Stay Value
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.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Experience Fiction Subject Theory
Nobody can teach me who I am.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Myself Philosophy Teaching
If I hold her hand she says, ‘Don’t touch!’ If I hold her foot she says ‘Don’t touch!’ But when I hold her waist-beads she pretends not to know.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Foot Hands Hold Myself Pretend
When brothers fight to death a stranger inherit their father’s estate.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Brother Death Fight Profit Stranger
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
The damage done in one year can sometimes take ten or twenty years to repair.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Damage Repair Time
Every lizard lies on its belly, so we cannot tell which has a belly-ache
CHINUA ACHEBE

Animal Lying Philosophy
We do not seek to hurt any man, but if any man seeks to hurt us may he break his neck.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Break Hurt Man Neck Seek

When we are comfortable and inattentive, we run the risk of committing grave injustices absentmindedly.

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When we are comfortable and inattentive, we run the risk of committing grave injustices absentmindedly.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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