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

Chinua Achebe

The price a world language must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of use.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Different Kind Language Price Submission World
It is the story that owns and directs us. It is the thing that makes us different from cattle; it is the mark on the face that sets one people apart from their neighbors.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Direction Neighbor People Story
When I began going to school and learned to read, I encountered stories of other people and other lands.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Beginning Education Land Learning Myself People
A child cannot pay for its mother’s milk.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Children Milk Mom Pay
The man that brings ant-infested faggots into his hut should not grumble when lizards begin to pay him a visit.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Beginning Himself Man Pay Visit
A debt may get mouldy, but it never decays.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Debt Decay
When a mad man walks naked, it is his kinsmen who feel shame, not himself.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Feeling Himself Madness Man Naked Shame
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
No man however great is greater than his people.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Greatness Leadership Man People Position Value
I 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 ACHEBE

Eat People Talk Yourself
The 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 ACHEBE

End Government Known Leadership Oneself Problem Worst
I don’t like to see mistakes on the typewriter. I like a perfect script. On the typewriter I will sometimes leave a phrase that is not right, not what I want, simply because to change it would be a bit messy.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Change Mistake Myself Perfection Script See Simplicity
As long as one people sit on another and are deaf to their cry, so long will understanding and peace elude all of us.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Oneself Peace People Understand
When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Death Ground Library Man Old
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.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Expression Feeling Story Talk
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

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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