Looking at faces of people, one gets the feeling there’s a lot of work to be done.
WOLE SOYINKAI 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.
More Wole Soyinka Quotes
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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 -
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 -
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?
WOLE SOYINKA -
Power is domination, control, and therefore a very selective form of truth which is a lie.
WOLE SOYINKA -
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 -
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 -
The media owes the responsibility to constantly tell the public the truth.
WOLE SOYINKA -
If man cannot, what god dare claim perfection?
WOLE SOYINKA -
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 -
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 -
But the ultimate lesson is just sit down and write. That’s all.
WOLE SOYINKA -
A human feast is an indifferent morsel to a god.
WOLE SOYINKA -
I can look violence in the face and either reject or accept it.
WOLE SOYINKA -
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 SOYINKA -
Governance can dig itself into a huge hole and not even know it’s in there.
WOLE SOYINKA