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 ACHEBEThe price a world language must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of use.
More Chinua Achebe Quotes
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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.
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As long as one people sit on another and are deaf to their cry, so long will understanding and peace elude all of us.
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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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When mother-cow is chewing grass its young ones watch its mouth
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One reason why I am quite angry with what is happening in Nigeria today is that everything has collapsed. If I decide to go back now, there will be so many problems – where will I find the physical therapy and other things that I now require?
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Each of my books is different. Deliberately. I wanted to create my society, my people, in their fullness.
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It is the story that owns and directs us. It is the thing that makes us different from cattle; it is the mark on the face that sets one people apart from their neighbors.
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There is no story that is not true.
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One of the truest tests of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised.
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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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What a man does not know is greater than he.
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We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own.
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A disease that has never been seen before cannot be cured with every-day herbs.
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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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Charity is the opium of the privileged.
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A child cannot pay for its mother’s milk.
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Do not be in a hurry to rush into the pleasures of the world like the young antelope who danced herself lame when the main dance was yet to come.
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The man that brings ant-infested faggots into his hut should not grumble when lizards begin to pay him a visit.
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My son even if you want to fall, at least fall where your bones can be gathered.
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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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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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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.
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A goat does not eat into a hen’s stomach no matter how friendly the two may be.
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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.
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A coward may cover the ground with his words but when the time comes to fight he runs away.
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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.
CHINUA ACHEBE