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 ACHEBEOnce you allow yourself to identify with the people in a story, then you might begin to see yourself in that story even if on the surface it’s far removed from your situation.
More Chinua Achebe Quotes
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We do not seek to hurt any man, but if any man seeks to hurt us may he break his neck.
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If you don’t like someone’s story, write your own.
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A goat does not eat into a hen’s stomach no matter how friendly the two may be.
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We shall all live. We pray for life, children, a good harvest and happiness. You will have what is good for you and I will have what is good for me. Let the kite perch and let the egret perch too. If one says no to the other, let his wing break.
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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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Privilege, you see, is one of the great adversaries of the imagination; it spreads a thick layer of adipose tissue over our sensitivity.
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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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You do not know me,’ said Tortoise. ‘I am a changed man. I have learned that a man who makes trouble for others makes trouble for himself.
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We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own.
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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.’
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A man who makes trouble for others is also making trouble for himself.
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Procrastination is a lazy man’s apology.
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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.
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If you only hear one side of the story, you have no understanding at all.
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Art is man’s constant effort to create for himself a different order of reality from that which is given to him.
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An angry man is always a stupid man.
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While we do our good works let us not forget that the real solution lies in a world in which charity will have become unnecessary.
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Once you allow yourself to identify with the people in a story, then you might begin to see yourself in that story even if on the surface it’s far removed from your situation.
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When brothers fight to death a stranger inherit their father’s estate.
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There is that great proverb – that until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.
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Nigeria is what it is because its leaders are not what they should be.
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What a country needs to do is be fair to all its citizens – whether people are of a different ethnicity or gender.
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There is no story that is not true.
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The only thing we have learnt from experience is that we learn nothing from experience.
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When a tradition gathers enough strength to go on for centuries, you don’t just turn it off one day.
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When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground.
CHINUA ACHEBE