Top 308 Quotes & Sayings by Chinua Achebe - Page 2

The lizard that jumped from a high Iroko tree to the ground said he would praise himself if no-one else did.

As long as one people sit on another and are deaf to their cry, so long will understanding and peace elude all of us.

When a mad man walks naked, it is his kinsmen who feel shame, not himself.

A man who pays respect to the great paves the way for his own greatness

The sun will shine on those who stand before it shines on those who kneel under them.

Just think of the work you've set yourself to do, and do it as well as you can.

It is the storyteller who makes us what we are, who creates history. The storyteller creates the memory that the survivors must have - otherwise their surviving would have no meaning.

An angry man is always a stupid man.

Charity . . . is the opium of the privileged.

...when we are comfortable and inattentive, we run the risk of committing grave injustices absentmindedly.

The impatient idealist says: 'Give me a place to stand and I shall move the earth.' But such a place does not exist. We all have to stand on the earth itself and go with her at her pace.

He is a fool who treats his brother worse than a stranger.

To answer oppression with appropriate resistance requires knowledge of two kinds: in the first place, self-knowledge by the victim, which means awareness that oppression exists, an awareness that the victim has fallen from a great height of glory or promise into the present depths; secondly, the victim must know who the enemy is. He must know his oppressor's real name, not an alias, a pseudonym, or a nom de plume!

I prefer to go on trying all kinds of things, not to be told, This is the way it is done.

It is praiseworthy to be brave and fearless, but sometimes it is better to be a coward. We often stand in the compound of a coward to point at the ruins where a brave man used to live.

Nobody can teach me who I am.

I believe in the complexity of the human story, and that there's no way you can tell that story in one way and say, 'this is it.' Always there will be someone who can tell it differently depending on where they are standing ... this is the way I think the world's stories should be told: from many different perspectives.

When a coward sees a man he can beat he becomes hungry for a fight.

I think not just Nigeria but I think the whole of Africa has to turn back to the rural areas and that's where the majority of the citizens are and that's where the engine of of development has to be found.

If I hold her hand she says, ‘Don’t touch!’ If I hold her foot she says ‘Don’t touch!’ But when I hold her waist-beads she pretends not to know.

Mosquito [...] had asked Ear to marry him, whereupon Ear fell on the floor in uncontrollable laughter. "How much longer do you think you will live?" she asked. "You are already a skeleton." Mosquito went away humiliated, and any time he passed her way he told Ear that he was still alive.

Every generation must recognize and embrace the task it is peculiarly designed by history and by providence to perform.

Diversity is not an abnormality but the very reality of our planet. The human world manifests the same reality and will not seek our permission to celebrate itself in the magnificence of its endless varieties. Civility is a sensible attribute in this kind of world we have; narrowness of heart and mind is not.

We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own.

When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground.

A disease that has never been seen before cannot be cured with every-day herbs.

Man is sitting disconsolate on an anthill one morning. God asks him what the matter is and man replies that the soil is too swampy for the cultivation of the yams which God has directed him to grow. God tells him to bring in a blacksmith to dry the soil with his bellows. The contribution of humanity to this creation is so important. God could have made the world perfect if he had wanted. But he made it the way it is. So that there is a constant need for us to discuss and cooperate to make it more habitable, so the soil can yield, you see.

The world is like a Mask dancing. If you want to see it well, you do not stand in one place.

Literature, whether handed down by word or mouth or in print, gives us a second handle on reality.

Do not be in a hurry to rush into the pleasures of the world like the young antelope who danced herself lame when the main dance was yet to come.

Privilege, you see, is one of the great adversaries of the imagination; it spreads a thick layer of adipose tissue over our sensitivity.

We do not seek to hurt any man, but if any man seeks to hurt us may he break his neck.

A goat does not eat into a hen's stomach no matter how friendly the two may be.

The world is large,” said Okonkwo. “I have even heard that in some tribes a man’s children belong to his wife and her family.” “That cannot be,” said Machi. “You might as well say that the woman lies on top of the man when they are making the babies.

Every generation must find its mission and fulfill it, as Fanon said - or betray it. So it is not something that you can write up on the wall, saying this is what has to be done. Every generation has to discover what it needs to do.

The language of young men is pull down and destroy; but an old man speaks of conciliation.

If you have leaders who are prepared to incite group against group it is very easy to manufacture reasons and excuses.

A man who does not lick his lips, can he blame the harmattan for drying them?

Every lizard lies on its belly, so we cannot tell which has a belly-ache

When brothers fight to death a stranger inherit their father’s estate

While we do our good works let us not forget that the real solution lies in a world in which charity will have become unnecessary.

There is nothing to fear from someone who shouts.

Procrastination is a lazy man's apology.

There is a moral obligation, I think, not to ally oneself with power against the powerless.

As a rule I don't like suffering to no purpose. Suffering should be creative, should give birth to something good and lovely.

If you don't like someone's story, write your own.

There is that great proverb - that until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter. That did not come to me until much later. Once I realized that, I had to be a writer. I had to be that historian. It's not one man's job. It's not one person's job. But it is something we have to do, so that the story of the hunt will also reflect the agony, the travail - the bravery, even, of the lions.

Whatever music you beat on your drum there is somebody who can dance to it.

People go to Africa and confirm what they already have in their heads and so they fail to see what is there in front of them. This is what people have come to expect. Its not viewed as a serious continent. Its a place of strange, bizarre and illogical things, where people dont do what common sense demands.

We shall all live. We pray for life, children, a good harvest and happiness. You will have what is good for you and I will have what is good for me. Let the kite perch and let the egret perch too. If one says no to the other, let his wing break.

Dancing is very important nowadays. No girl will look at you if you can't dance.

If you don't like someone's story, write your own. If you don't like what somebody says, say what it is you don't like.

If one finger brings oil it soils the others.

Now one of the changes that must come to Africa is the idea of limited rule, I mean in term of how long one leader can stay in power. The era of president for life is not gone yet but it is on its way out and that is one of the problems with Mugabe and others.

What I can say is that it was clear to many of us that an indigenous African literary renaissance was overdue. A major objective was to challenge stereotypes, myths, and the image of ourselves and our continent, and to recast them through stories- prose, poetry, essays, and books for our children. That was my overall goal.

Ogbuef Ezedudu,who was the oldest man in the village, was telling two other men when they came to visit him that the punishment for breaking the Peace of Ani had become very mild in their clan. "It has not always been so," he said. "My father told me that he had been told that in the past a man who broke the peace was dragged on the ground through the village until he died. but after a while this custom was stopped because it spoiled the peace which it was meant to preserve.

Only the story can continue beyond the war and the warrior. The story outlives the sound of the war drum... The story is our escort. Without it we are blind... It is the thing that sets us apart from cattle.

Writing is like wrestling; you are wrestling with ideas and with the story. There is a lot of energy required. At the same time, it is exciting. So it is both difficult and easy. What you must accept is that your life is not going to be the same while you are writing. I have said in the kind of exaggerated manner of writers and prophets that writing, for me, is like receiving a term of imprisonment-you know that's what you're in for, for whatever time it takes.

A child cannot pay for its mother’s milk.

There is no story that is not true.