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A functioning, robust democracy requires a healthy educated, participatory followership, and an educated, morally grounded leadership.

Chinua Achebe

The problem with leaderless uprisings taking over is that you don’t always know what you get at the other end. If you are not careful you could replace a bad government with one much worse!
CHINUA ACHEBE

End Government Known Leadership Oneself Problem Worst
The world is like a Mask dancing. If you want to see it well, you do not stand in one place.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Dance Mask Place Stand World Yourself
An artist in my view is always afraid of extremists; he is always afraid of those who claim to have found the ultimate solution to any question.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Afraid Artist Question Solution Ultimate View
Privilege, you see, is one of the great adversaries of the imagination; it spreads a thick layer of adipose tissue over our sensitivity.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Greatness Imagination Man Privilege Yourself
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
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
The language of young men is pull down and destroy; but an old man speaks of conciliation.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Destroy Language Man Old Repair Talk Togetherness Young
A debt may get mouldy, but it never decays.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Debt Decay
Every generation must recognize and embrace the task it is peculiarly designed by history and by providence to perform.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Design Embrace Generation History Performance Recognition Task
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.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Deal Fools Goodness Known Man Peace Thinking Yourself
Each of my books is different. Deliberately. I wanted to create my society, my people, in their fullness.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Book Creation Different Myself People
A man who pays respect to the great paves the way for his own greatness
CHINUA ACHEBE

Character Ethnicity Greatness Man Pay Respect
A functioning, robust democracy requires a healthy educated, participatory followership, and an educated, morally grounded leadership.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Democracy Education Function Government Leadership Participate
No man however great is greater than his people.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Greatness Leadership Man People Position Value
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
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
As long as one people sit on another and are deaf to their cry, so long will understanding and peace elude all of us.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Oneself Peace People Understand
If you have leaders who are prepared to incite group against group it is very easy to manufacture reasons and excuses.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Easy Leadership Manufacture Preparation Reason Yourself
When mother-cow is chewing grass its young ones watch its mouth
CHINUA ACHEBE

Man Watch Young
If a child washed his hands, he could eat with kings.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Children Deep Eat Hands King Value Wash
I think back to the old people I knew when I was growing up, and they always seemed larger than life.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Growth Life Old People Thinking
A goat does not eat into a hen’s stomach no matter how friendly the two may be.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Friendship Goat Hen Stomach
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 ACHEBE

Himself Humanity Moral Practical Stay Value
My weapon is literature.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Literature Myself Weapon
We do not seek to hurt any man, but if any man seeks to hurt us may he break his neck.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Break Hurt Man Neck Seek
What a man does not know is greater than he.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Greatness Himself Man
A coward may cover the ground with his words but when the time comes to fight he runs away.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Coward Fight Run Time War

A functioning, robust democracy requires a healthy educated, participatory followership, and an educated, morally grounded leadership.

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A functioning, robust democracy requires a healthy educated, participatory followership, and an educated, morally grounded leadership.

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Popular Authors

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