I have no money to give to you but I have ideas and organizational capacity.
WOLE SOYINKAIf man cannot, what god dare claim perfection?
More Wole Soyinka Quotes
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The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism.
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 -
You cannot live a normal existence if you haven’t taken care of a problem that affects your life and affects the lives of others, values that you hold which in fact define your very existence.
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.
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For me, justice is the prime condition of humanity.
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Writers are human. I shudder to think how I must sometimes appear to others.
WOLE SOYINKA -
Mythology can be used, and has been used, even to re-state, you know, the very urgent problems of the world.
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
Each time I think Ive created time for myself, along comes a throwback to disrupt my private space.
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 -
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 -
It is the human potentials that interest me. I travel and everywhere I go I am amazed at the presence of Nigerians. The intelligence, integrity, productivity, initiative.
WOLE SOYINKA