My father used to tell me stories before I fell asleep. When the children would gather, at a certain point, I had a tendency to make up my own elementary variations on stories I had heard, or to invent totally new ones.
WOLE SOYINKAThe hand that dips into the bottom of the pot will eat the biggest snail.
More Wole Soyinka Quotes
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I cannot accept the definition of collective good as articulated by a privileged minority in society, especially when that minority is in power.
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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.
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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 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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Some of us – poets are not exactly poets. We live sometimes – beyond the word.
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I don’t really consider myself a novelist, it just came out purely by accident.
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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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The writer is the visionary of his people… He anticipates, he warns.
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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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And I believe that the best learning process of any kind of craft is just to look at the work of others.
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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.
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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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Books and all forms of writing are terror to those who wish to suppress the truth.
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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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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.
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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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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 have one abiding religion-human liberty.
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Sadness is twilight’s kiss on earth.
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The hand that dips into the bottom of the pot will eat the biggest snail.
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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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Culture is a matrix of infinite possibilities and choices. From within the same culture matrix we can extract arguments and strategies for the degradation and ennoblement of our species, for its enslavement or liberation, for the suppression of its productive potential or its enhancement.
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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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I believe that each writer must decide in which language he or she is most comfortable.
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There’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.
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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.
WOLE SOYINKA