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 ACHEBEWhen we are comfortable and inattentive, we run the risk of committing grave injustices absentmindedly.
More Chinua Achebe Quotes
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A debt may get mouldy, but it never decays.
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When I began going to school and learned to read, I encountered stories of other people and other lands.
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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.
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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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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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There is nothing to fear from someone who shouts.
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The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.
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If you only hear one side of the story, you have no understanding at all.
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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.
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Wisdom is like a goatskin bag; every man carries his own.
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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 lizard that jumped from a high Iroko tree to the ground said he would praise himself if no-one else did.
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Literature, whether handed down by word or mouth or in print, gives us a second handle on reality.
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When a coward sees a man he can beat he becomes hungry for a fight.
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The damage done in one year can sometimes take ten or twenty years to repair.
CHINUA ACHEBE