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 SOYINKAWhen 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.
More Wole Soyinka Quotes
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Some of us – poets are not exactly poets. We live sometimes – beyond the word.
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. . . 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.
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The media owes the responsibility to constantly tell the public the truth.
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We all have our individual artistic temperaments as well as partisanships in creative directions. And we have strong opinions on the merits of the products of our occupation.
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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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A tiger does not proclaim his tigritude, he pounces.
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The man dies in all those that keep silent.
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Romance is the sweetening of the soul With fragrance offered by the stricken heart.
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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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Be yourself. Ultimately just be yourself.
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I know there are writers who get up every morning and sit by their typewriter or word processor or pad of paper and wait to write. I don’t function that way. I go through a long period of gestation before I’m even ready to write.
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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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The writer is the visionary of his people… He anticipates, he warns.
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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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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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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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Each time I think Ive created time for myself, along comes a throwback to disrupt my private space.
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To achieve any change in the minds of the youth, there must be reorientation in terms of materialistic tendencies, corruption and crime generally.
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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.
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Religion has really spawned some monsters. It always has, historically. Go all the way back to the Inquisition, you know, the Crusades, the Jehad and so on.
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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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Books and all forms of writing are terror to those who wish to suppress the truth.
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Governance can dig itself into a huge hole and not even know it’s in there.
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We live in a materialist world, and materialism appeals so strongly to humanity, no matter where.
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When I say war, I’m not talking about mental war; I’m talking about totally eliminating the obstacles to transformation of our children.
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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.
WOLE SOYINKA