Governance can dig itself into a huge hole and not even know it’s in there.
WOLE SOYINKAAnd 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.
More Wole Soyinka Quotes
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The hand that dips into the bottom of the pot will eat the biggest snail.
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You accept whoever you are interacting with, directly, or indirectly.
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As a global citizen, I sometimes feel like denying my identity.
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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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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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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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Don’t take shadows too seriously. Reality is your only safety. Continue to reject illusion.
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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.
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Alfred Nobel regretted that his invention, dynamite, was converted to degrading use, hence his creation of the Nobel Prize, as the humanist counter to the destructive power of his genius.
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Some of us – poets are not exactly poets. We live sometimes – beyond the word.
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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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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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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.
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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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Sadness is twilight’s kiss on earth.
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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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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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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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For me, a writer is already being the deuce of his mission, his occupation to society.
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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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I consider the process of gestation just as important as when you’re actually sitting down putting words to the paper.
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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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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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Each time I think Ive created time for myself, along comes a throwback to disrupt my private space.
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I have one abiding religion-human liberty.
WOLE SOYINKA