“One of the truest tests of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised.”

When we are comfortable and inattentive, we run the risk of committing grave injustices absentmindedly.

Become familiar with your home, but know also about your neighbors. The young man who never went anywhere thinks his mother is the greatest cook.

The only thing we have learnt from experience is that we learn nothing from experience.

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.

The lizard that jumped from a high Iroko tree to the ground said he would praise himself if no-one else did.

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.

People create stories create people; or rather stories create people create stories.

I think not just Nigeria but I think the whole of Africa has to turn back to the rural areas and that’s where the majority of the citizens are and that’s where the engine of of development has to be found.

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.

We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own.

When a man is at peace with his gods and ancestors, his harvest will be good or bad according to the strength of his arm.

Art is man’s constant effort to create for himself a different order of reality from that which is given to him.

I am against people reaping where they have not sown. But we have a saying that if you want to eat a toad you should look for a fat and juicy one.

In dealing with a man who thinks you are a fool, it is good sometimes to remind him that you know what he knows but have chosen to appear foolish for the sake of peace.

When a mad man walks naked, it is his kinsmen who feel shame, not himself.

I think back to the old people I knew when I was growing up, and they always seemed larger than life.

I compromise, but I don’t settle.

Live for who and what you love and never compromise your beliefs for anything or anyone.

Self-love ultimately is knowing your limit on compromising and where you draw the line. People will tell you different things, making their own opinions sound like facts, but it is only you who can decide what your truth is.

Do not compromise who you are to satisfy the ones that are always trying to change you, that are constantly disappointed in your love.

Never compromise on who you are. You are born with the capacity to achieve greatness if you so desire.

Every compromise pursues false happiness.

The minute you start compromising for the sake of massaging somebody’s ego, that’s it, game over.

Wherever we go, there seems to be only one business at hand – that of finding a workable compromise between the sublimity of our ideas and the absurdity of the fact of us.