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?
WOLE SOYINKAThe writer is the visionary of his people… He anticipates, he warns.
More Wole Soyinka Quotes
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Looking at faces of people, one gets the feeling there’s a lot of work to be done.
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For me, justice is the prime condition of humanity.
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Let’s say there are prospects for a new Nigeria, but I don’t think we have a new Nigeria yet.
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I believe that each writer must decide in which language he or she is most comfortable.
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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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History teaches us to beware of the excitation of the liberated and the injustices that often accompany their righteous thirst for justice.
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I don’t know any other way to live but to wake up everyday armed with my convictions, not yielding them to the threat of danger and to the power and force of people who might despise me.
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Very conscious of the fact that an effort was being made to destroy my mind, because I was deprived of books, deprived of any means of writing, deprived of human companionship. You never know how much you need it until you’re deprived of it.
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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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Some of us – poets are not exactly poets. We live sometimes – beyond the word.
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When I say war, I’m not talking about mental war; I’m talking about totally eliminating the obstacles to transformation of our children.
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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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But theater, because of its nature, both text, images, multimedia effects, has a wider base of communication with an audience. That’s why I call it the most social of the various art forms.
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Don’t take shadows too seriously. Reality is your only safety. Continue to reject illusion.
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I never hesitated, as a student, in embracing the necessity of violence. In South Africa, I didn’t just accept it; I looked forward to it as a mission.
WOLE SOYINKA