Chinua Achebe Quotes

A number of very young people in Kenya have adopted the Marxist analysis of society. And I cannot quarrel with that. But I can't help feeling at the same time... that my own aesthetic definition, which I gave earlier on, would be a little uneasy about the narrowing of things to a point where we no longer accept the truth of the Ibo proverb that "Where something stands, something else will stand beside it," and that we become like the people we are talking about the single-mindedness which leads to totalitarianism of all kinds, to fanaticism of all kinds. And I can't help the feeling that somehow at the base, art and fanaticism are not loggerheads. And so I don't dismiss the Marxist interpretation. I think it is valid in its way. But when somebody says "I am the way, the truth, and the light.... "Now my own religion, the religion of my people says something else. It says, "You may worship one god to perfection and another god will kill you." Wherever something is, something else also is. And I think it is important that whatever the regimes are saying that the artist keeps himself ready to enter the other plea. Perhaps it's not tidy perhaps we are contradicting ourselves. But one of your poets has said, "Do I contradict myself? Very well."

The guilty suffers; the sufferer is guilty. As for the righteous, those whose arms are straight, they will always prosper!

Nobody can teach me who I am.

An old woman is always uneasy when dry bones are mentioned in a proverb

It always surprised him when he thought of it later that he did not sink under the load of despair.

Aha! Come to think of it, that might explain the insistence of the oppressed that the oppressor must not be allowed to camouflage his appearance or confuse the poor by stealing and masquerading in their clothes. Perhaps it is the demand of that primitive integrity of the earth... Or, who knows, it might also be something less innocent (for the earth does have its streak of peasant cunning) - an insistence that your badge of privilege must never leave your breast, nor your coat of many colours your back... so that... on the wrathful day of reckoning... you will be as conspicuous as a peacock!

He looked as bright as a new shilling in his immaculate white robes.

the clock is ticking

A person who has not secured a place on the floor should not begin to look for a mat.

The point in all this is that language is a handy whipping boy to summon and belabor when we have failed in some serious way. In other words, we play politics with language, and in so doing conceal the reality and the complexity of our situation from ourselves and from those foolish enough to put their trust in us.

A toad does not run in the daytime for nothing

The foreign correspondent is frequently the only means of getting an important story told, or of drawing the world's attention to disasters in the making or being covered up. Such an important role is risky in more ways than one. It can expose the correspondent to actual physical danger; but there is also the moral danger of indulging in sensationalism and dehumanizing the sufferer. This danger immediately raises the question of the character and attitude of the correspondent, because the same qualities of mind which in the past separated a Conrad from a Livingstone, or a Gainsborough from the anonymous painter of Francis Williams, are still present and active in the world today. Perhaps this difference can best be put in one phrase: the presence or absence of respect for the human person.

A proud heart can survive general failure because such a failure does not prick its pride. It is more difficult and more bitter when a man fails alone.

انصت إلّي. إنك لست غريبًا في أوموفيا وتعلم أن آباءنا قد قرروا أنه قبل أن نزرع أي محصول في الأرض علينا أن نكرس أسبوعًا لا يتفوّه فيه الشخص بكلمة نابية لجاره. إننا نعيش في سلام مع بني جلدتنا لنكرم آلهة الأرض العظيمة التي لا تنمو محاصيلنا دون بركتها. لقد أتيت شرًا عظيمًا

Lying in wait for the people’s land and resources.