Looking at faces of people, one gets the feeling there’s a lot of work to be done.
WOLE SOYINKABut the ultimate lesson is just sit down and write. That’s all.
More Wole Soyinka Quotes
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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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Writers are human. I shudder to think how I must sometimes appear to others.
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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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Books and all forms of writing are terror to those who wish to suppress the truth.
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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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Intolerance has always been with us, you know. The moment you have ideology, we have intolerance, whether it’s the secular ideology or, you know ideocratic ideology, which always brings with it some kind of intolerance.
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Some of us – poets are not exactly poets. We live sometimes – beyond the word.
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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?
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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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The media owes the responsibility to constantly tell the public the truth.
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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.
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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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The hand that dips into the bottom of the pot will eat the biggest snail.
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Be yourself. Ultimately just be yourself.
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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






