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Wisdom is like a goatskin bag; every man carries his own.

Chinua Achebe

Whenever you see a toad jumping in broad daylight, then know that something is after its life.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Animal Frog Known Life See 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
When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Death Ground Library Man Old
He is a fool who treats his brother worse than a stranger.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Brother Fools Treat Worst
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

Better Brave Coward Live Praise Worth
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.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Clear Fools Himself Man Peace Togetherness White Winning
There is a moral obligation, I think, not to ally oneself with power against the powerless.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Moral Obligation Power Thinking
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
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
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.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Control Freedom Human Religion Spirit Threat
When we are comfortable and inattentive, we run the risk of committing grave injustices absentmindedly.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Attention Comfortable Commitment Grave Risk Run
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 man of worth never gets up to unsay what he said yesterday.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Himself Man Worth
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
People go to Africa and confirm what they already have in their heads and so they fail to see what is there in front of them.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Confirm Failure Head People See
Let the kite perch and let the eagle perch too – If one says no to the other, let his wing break.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Break Oneself Wings

Wisdom is like a goatskin bag; every man carries his own.

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Wisdom is like a goatskin bag; every man carries his own.

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