Nobody can teach me who I am.
CHINUA ACHEBEMy son even if you want to fall, at least fall where your bones can be gathered.
More Chinua Achebe Quotes
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Just think of the work you’ve set yourself to do, and do it as well as you can.
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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.’
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We do not seek to hurt any man, but if any man seeks to hurt us may he break his neck.
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As a rule I don’t like suffering to no purpose. Suffering should be creative, should give birth to something good and lovely.
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I prefer to go on trying all kinds of things, not to be told, This is the way it is done.
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Privilege, you see, is one of the great adversaries of the imagination; it spreads a thick layer of adipose tissue over our sensitivity.
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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.
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One of the truest tests of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised.
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A disease that has never been seen before cannot be cured with every-day herbs.
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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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In fact, I thought that Christianity was very a good and a very valuable thing for us. But after a while, I began to feel that the story that I was told about this religion wasn’t perhaps completely whole, that something was left out.
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There is a moral obligation, I think, not to ally oneself with power against the powerless.
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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.
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Among the Igbo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten.
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There is that great proverb – that until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.
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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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He is a fool who treats his brother worse than a stranger.
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What a man does not know is greater than he.
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When suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool.
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Wisdom is like a goatskin bag; every man carries his own.
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Women and music should not be dated.
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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.
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The price a world language must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of use.
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I don’t like to see mistakes on the typewriter. I like a perfect script. On the typewriter I will sometimes leave a phrase that is not right, not what I want, simply because to change it would be a bit messy.
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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.
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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.
CHINUA ACHEBE