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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

Nobody 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.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Description Finding Myself Need Teaching
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
When suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Door Hard Time Himself Knock Suffering Worry
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.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Children Family Man Sex Tribe Woman World
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 goat does not eat into a hen’s stomach no matter how friendly the two may be.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Friendship Goat Hen Stomach
When we are comfortable and inattentive, we run the risk of committing grave injustices absentmindedly.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Attention Comfortable Commitment Grave Risk Run
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
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
People create stories create people; or rather stories create people create stories.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Creation Inspirational People Story Success
A man of worth never gets up to unsay what he said yesterday.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Himself Man Worth
We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Humanity Ourselves Value
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
There is a moral obligation, I think, not to ally oneself with power against the powerless.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Moral Obligation Power Thinking
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
Africa is to Europe as the picture is to Dorian Gray-a carrier onto whom the master unloads his physical & moral deformities.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Moral Photograph Physical

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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