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.
CHINUA ACHEBEIt has always been quite apparent to me that no important story can fail to tell us something of value to us.
More Chinua Achebe Quotes
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Procrastination is a lazy man’s apology.
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There is a moral obligation, I think, not to ally oneself with power against the powerless.
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We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own.
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Charity is the opium of the privileged.
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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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People say that if you find water rising up to your ankle, that’s the time to do something about it, not when it’s around your neck.
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What a man does not know is greater than he.
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If you don’t like someone’s story, write your own.
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Every lizard lies on its belly, so we cannot tell which has a belly-ache
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Women and music should not be dated.
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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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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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One reason why I am quite angry with what is happening in Nigeria today is that everything has collapsed. If I decide to go back now, there will be so many problems – where will I find the physical therapy and other things that I now require?
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A debt may get mouldy, but it never decays.
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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.
CHINUA ACHEBE