Chinua Achebe Quotes

Charity is the opium of the privileged.
CHINUA ACHEBE

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

Break Oneself Wings
No man however great is greater than his people.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Greatness Leadership Man People Position Value
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
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
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.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Discover Finding Fulfill Generation Mission Need
Literature, whether handed down by word or mouth or in print, gives us a second handle on reality.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Hands Literature Ourselves 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.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Break Children Live Prayer Wing
Nigeria is what it is because its leaders are not what they should be.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Government Leadership Politics
A disease that has never been seen before cannot be cured with every-day herbs.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Carry Cure Disease Hospital
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.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Clear Fools Himself Man Peace Togetherness White Winning
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.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Finding Neck People Time Water Yourself
Whatever music you beat on your drum there is somebody who can dance to it.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Dance Finding Music Self Love Yourself
When mother-cow is chewing grass its young ones watch its mouth
CHINUA ACHEBE

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

Art Conversation Eat Word
Just think of the work you’ve set yourself to do, and do it as well as you can.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Thinking Work Yourself
When a coward sees a man he can beat he becomes hungry for a fight.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Competition Coward Fight Hungry Man See
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?
CHINUA ACHEBE

Angry Collapse Quit Reason Therapy Trouble
Africa is to Europe as the picture is to Dorian Gray-a carrier onto whom the master unloads his physical & moral deformities.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Moral Photograph Physical
There is no story that is not true.
CHINUA ACHEBE

One Liner Story True
A debt may get mouldy, but it never decays.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Debt Decay
A man of worth never gets up to unsay what he said yesterday.
CHINUA ACHEBE

Himself Man Worth
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

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