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 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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What I teach is literary criticism and comparative literature and so on and that’s my function, but from time to time it’s possible for me actually to help a writer. I read something and something strikes me then, I feel I can talk to that writer about it.
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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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We live in a materialist world, and materialism appeals so strongly to humanity, no matter where.
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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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Well, some people say I’m pessimistic because I recognize the eternal cycle of evil. All I say is, look at the history of mankind right up to this moment and what do you find?
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Power is domination, control, and therefore a very selective form of truth which is a lie.
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Some of us – poets are not exactly poets. We live sometimes – beyond the word.
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We do not ask the mountain’s aid to crack a walnut.
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The writer is the visionary of his people… He anticipates, he warns.
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Governance can dig itself into a huge hole and not even know it’s in there.
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When a leader encourages the culture of impunity, the society is lost and it makes the work harder for the rest of us.
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My understanding of the creative process is simply that all cultures and all concerns meet at a certain point, the human point in which everything is related to one another. That has been my creative experience.
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You have the entire gamut of human experience captured in the mythology of the Yoruba. This is what makes the Yoruba mythology a natural source material for me in my creative endeavours.
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Be yourself. Ultimately just be yourself.
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The media owes the responsibility to constantly tell the public the truth.
WOLE SOYINKA