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

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.

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.

Let the kite perch and let the eagle perch too – If one says no to the other, let his wing break.

No man however great is greater than his people.

The world is like a Mask dancing. If you want to see it well, you do not stand in one place.

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.

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.

Literature, whether handed down by word or mouth or in print, gives us a second handle on reality.

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.

Nigeria is what it is because its leaders are not what they should be.

A disease that has never been seen before cannot be cured with every-day herbs.

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.

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.

Whatever music you beat on your drum there is somebody who can dance to it.

When mother-cow is chewing grass its young ones watch its mouth

Among the Igbo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten.

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.

The opposite of compromise is character.