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.
WOLE SOYINKA. . . 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.
More Wole Soyinka Quotes
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I believe that each writer must decide in which language he or she is most comfortable.
WOLE SOYINKA -
Colonialism bred an innate arrogance, but when you undertake that sort of imperial adventure, that arrogance gives way to a feeling of accommodativeness. You take pride in your openness.
WOLE SOYINKA -
The youth should come together to challenge the status quo. They must not give up.
WOLE SOYINKA -
Mythology can be used, and has been used, even to re-state, you know, the very urgent problems of the world.
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For me, a writer is already being the deuce of his mission, his occupation to society.
WOLE SOYINKA -
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.
WOLE SOYINKA -
Intolerance has become, I think, the reigning ideology of the world today, the intolerance versus intolerance and it’s taken on lethal proportions.
WOLE SOYINKA -
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 SOYINKA -
Arts and the Sciences are a natural symbiosis. They stem from the same human existential impulse – exploration. Exploration of what lies beneath the surface, and re-confuguration of elements of what we call reality.
WOLE SOYINKA -
The media owes the responsibility to constantly tell the public the truth.
WOLE SOYINKA -
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.
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 -
I can look violence in the face and either reject or accept it.
WOLE SOYINKA -
And I believe that the best learning process of any kind of craft is just to look at the work of others.
WOLE SOYINKA -
I cannot accept the definition of collective good as articulated by a privileged minority in society, especially when that minority is in power.
WOLE SOYINKA