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 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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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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Every generation must find its mission and fulfill it, as Fanon said – or betray it. So it is not something that you can write up on the wall, saying this is what has to be done. Every generation has to discover what it needs to do.
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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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A debt may get mouldy, but it never decays.
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If you don’t like someone’s story, write your own.
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A man of worth never gets up to unsay what he said yesterday.
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There is no story that is not true.
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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.
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When a coward sees a man he can beat he becomes hungry for a fight.
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When a mad man walks naked, it is his kinsmen who feel shame, not himself.
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Do not be in a hurry to rush into the pleasures of the world like the young antelope who danced herself lame when the main dance was yet to come.
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A coward may cover the ground with his words but when the time comes to fight he runs away.
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Among the Igbo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten.
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One of the truest tests of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised.
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When old people speak it is not because of the sweetness of words in our mouths; it is because we see something which you do not see.
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