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What a country needs to do is be fair to all its citizens – whether people are of a different ethnicity or gender.

Chinua Achebe

When I began going to school and learned to read, I encountered stories of other people and other lands.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Beginning Education Land Learning Myself People
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

Beginning Identify People Removal Situation Story Yourself
If you only hear one side of the story, you have no understanding at all.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Hear Understand Yourself
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.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Control Freedom Human Religion Spirit Threat
The lizard that jumped from a high Iroko tree to the ground said he would praise himself if no-one else did.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Deep Lizard Philosophy Praise
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.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Experience Fiction Subject Theory
When old people speak it is not because of the sweetness of words in our mouths; it is because we see something which you do not see.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Mouth Old Ourselves People Sweet
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
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.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Change Mistake Myself Perfection Script See Simplicity
There is nothing to fear from someone who shouts.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Character Fear Man Nature Oneself Shout
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
My weapon is literature.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Literature Myself Weapon
The only thing we have learnt from experience is that we learn nothing from experience.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Experience Learning Philosophy Wisdom
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
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 ACHEBE

Earth Existence Ideal Myself Place
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

What a country needs to do is be fair to all its citizens – whether people are of a different ethnicity or gender.

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What a country needs to do is be fair to all its citizens – whether people are of a different ethnicity or gender.

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Popular Authors

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