But when you’re deprived of it for a lengthy period then you value human companionship. But you have to survive and so you devise all kinds of mental exercises and it’s amazing.
WOLE SOYINKAI am convinced that Nigeria would have been a more highly developed country without the oil. I wished we’d never smelled the fumes of petroleum.
More Wole Soyinka Quotes
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Religion has really spawned some monsters. It always has, historically. Go all the way back to the Inquisition, you know, the Crusades, the Jehad and so on.
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. . . as far as the regime is concerned, well, the play is sheer terror for them. Because they feel, How dare – how dare anybody lift his or her voice in criticism against us? We have the guns. Their level of paranoia and power-drunkenness is unbelievable.
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Sadness is twilight’s kiss on earth.
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Everybody knows that fraternities are a normal culture in all colleges. It exists in all colleges. President Clinton was a member of a fraternity. In fact, anybody who goes to College in the United States is a member of a College fraternity. There is absolutely nothing evil or occultic about fraternity.
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I think that feeling that if one believed absolutely in any cause, then one must have the confidence, the self-certainty, to go through with that particular course of action.
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The media must be used effectively to reach the masses. You have to find a new language in which to address the people and demonstrate what is possible.
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Some of us – poets are not exactly poets. We live sometimes – beyond the word.
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I believe that each writer must decide in which language he or she is most comfortable.
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You cannot live a normal existence if you haven’t taken care of a problem that affects your life and affects the lives of others, values that you hold which in fact define your very existence.
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Don’t take shadows too seriously. Reality is your only safety. Continue to reject illusion.
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The hand that dips into the bottom of the pot will eat the biggest snail.
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Power is domination, control, and therefore a very selective form of truth which is a lie.
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Each time I think Ive created time for myself, along comes a throwback to disrupt my private space.
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And gradually they’re beginning to recognize the fact that there’s nothing more secure than a democratic, accountable, and participatory form of government. But it’s sunk in only theoretically, it has not yet sunk in completely in practical terms.
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It is the human potentials that interest me. I travel and everywhere I go I am amazed at the presence of Nigerians. The intelligence, integrity, productivity, initiative.
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I said: “A tiger does not proclaim his tigritude, he pounces”. In other words: a tiger does not stand in the forest and say: “I am a tiger”. When you pass where the tiger has walked before, you see the skeleton of the duiker, you know that some tigritude has been emanated there.
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There is only one home to the life of a river-mussel; there is only one home to the life of a tortoise; there is only one shell to the soul of man: there is only one world to the spirit of our race. If that world leaves its course and smashes on boulders of the great void, whose world will give us shelter?
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The writer is the visionary of his people… He anticipates, he warns.
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Intolerance has always been with us, you know. The moment you have ideology, we have intolerance, whether it’s the secular ideology or, you know ideocratic ideology, which always brings with it some kind of intolerance.
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There is something really horrific for any human being who feels he is being consumed by other people.
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I’m not one of those writers I learned about who get up in the morning, put a piece of paper in their typewriter machine and start writing. That I’ve never understood.
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I rarely use mythology for its own sake because, as a theatre person, the mythological figures are in fact humanity to the ninth degree and Yoruba mythology in particular has fascination of being one of the most humanised mythologies in the world.
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I began writing early – very, very early… I was already writing short stories for the radio and selling poems to poetry and art festivals; I was involved in school plays; I wrote essays, so there was no definite moment when I said, ‘Now I’m a writer.’ I’ve always been a writer.
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I can look violence in the face and either reject or accept it.
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When you are looking for corruption, you should look at the entire stratum of the society, while some forms of corruption are direct, others are indirect.
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To achieve any change in the minds of the youth, there must be reorientation in terms of materialistic tendencies, corruption and crime generally.
WOLE SOYINKA