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.
WOLE SOYINKAThere’s a lot of insincerity about the actions of our legislators; they create distractions – like this anti-gay law you alluded to – and try to mobilise, to exacerbate people’s emotions. Until the legislators started making laws, people minded, generally, their own business.
More Wole Soyinka Quotes
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I 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.
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My definition of slavery is the deprivation of human volition, any form of relationship between two peoples which is based on the deprivation of volition of one side.
WOLE SOYINKA -
See, even despite pious statements to the contrary, much of the industrialized world has not yet come to terms with the recognition of the fallacy of what I call the strong man syndrome.
WOLE SOYINKA -
The hand that dips into the bottom of the pot will eat the biggest snail.
WOLE SOYINKA -
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.
WOLE SOYINKA -
No man beholds his mother’s womb Yet who denies it’s there? Coiled To the navel of the world is that Endless cord that links us all To the great Origin. If I lose my way. The trailing cord will bring me to the roots.
WOLE SOYINKA -
Romance is the sweetening of the soul With fragrance offered by the stricken heart.
WOLE SOYINKA -
Looking at faces of people, one gets the feeling there’s a lot of work to be done.
WOLE SOYINKA -
Governance can dig itself into a huge hole and not even know it’s in there.
WOLE SOYINKA -
We all have our individual artistic temperaments as well as partisanships in creative directions. And we have strong opinions on the merits of the products of our occupation.
WOLE SOYINKA -
I have one abiding religion-human liberty.
WOLE SOYINKA -
A human feast is an indifferent morsel to a god.
WOLE SOYINKA -
Well, the first thing is that truth and power for me form an antithesis, an antagonism, which will hardly ever be resolved. I can define in fact, can simplify the history of human society, the evolution of human society, as a contest between power and freedom.
WOLE SOYINKA -
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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The man dies in all those that keep silent.
WOLE SOYINKA






