Ngugi wa Thiong'o Quotes

Many people do not know that Jesus did not speak Latin or English or Hebrew; he spoke Aramaic. But nobody knows that language.

A person who acquires English has access to all the things that that language makes possible.

For me, being in prison writing in an African language was a way of saying: “Even if you put me in prison, I will keep on writing in the language which made you put me in prison.”

If poverty was to be sold three cents today, i can’t buy it.

The Pan-Africanism that envisaged the ideal of wholeness was gradually cut down to the size of a continent, then a nation, a region, an ethnos, a clan, and even a village in some instances But Pan-Africanism has not outlived its mission.

Life, struggle, even amidst pain and blood and poverty, seemed beautiful.

Then they begin to see through their language that the problems described there are the same as the problems they are having. They can identify with characters from another language group.

Those who strive to build a protective wall around it, and those who wish to pull it down; those who seek to mould it and those committed to breaking it up; those who aim to open our eyes, to make us see the light and look to tomorrow […] and those who wish to lull us into closing our eyes

So we’re talking about the Bible itself being a translation of a translation of a translation. And, in reality, it has affected people’s lives in history.

I was wondering why I was put in prison for working in an African language when I had not been put in prison for working in English. So really, in prison I started thinking more seriously about the relation between language and power.