History teaches us to beware of the excitation of the liberated and the injustices that often accompany their righteous thirst for justice.
WOLE SOYINKAWe 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.
More Wole Soyinka Quotes
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I don’t really consider myself a novelist, it just came out purely by accident.
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I have one abiding religion-human liberty.
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As a global citizen, I sometimes feel like denying my identity.
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I am a very curious person; I’ll always ask: is this thing true, is it not true? And I use my own means to investigate and come to my conclusion.
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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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I rarely use mythology for its own sake because, as a theatre person, the mythological figures are in fact humanity to the ninth degree and Yoruba mythology in particular has fascination of being one of the most humanised mythologies in the world.
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You accept whoever you are interacting with, directly, or indirectly.
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Books and all forms of writing are terror to those who wish to suppress the truth.
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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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When a leader encourages the culture of impunity, the society is lost and it makes the work harder for the rest of us.
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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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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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And 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.
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I have no money to give to you but I have ideas and organizational capacity.
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Writers are human. I shudder to think how I must sometimes appear to others.
WOLE SOYINKA