Wole Soyinka Quotes

The totem, my final insult. The final taunt from the human pigs.

It is a mindless clown who dispenses thanks as a fowl scatters meal not caring where it falls.

It's a foolish elder who becomes a creditor, since he must wait until the other world, or outlive his debtors.

Bush-girl you are, bush girl you'll always be; / Uncivilized and primitive—bush-girl!

Doesn't she look like the type that would drive men to madness and self-destruction?

When a squirrel seeks sanctuary up the iroko tree the hunter's chase is ended.

The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny.

Because he could not bear to let honour fly out of doors, he stopped it with his life. The son has proved the father Elesin, and there is nothing left in your mouth to gnash but infant gums.

Change was impossible to predict. A tempo, a mood would have settled over the house, over guests, relations, casual visitors, poor relations, 'cousins,' strays – all recognized within a tangible pattern of feeling – and then it would happen!

These rites of the dead. I do not know why you take them on,"

Will you take my case?

What is one flesh from another? So I tried it again, just to be sure of myself. It was the first step to power, you understand. Power in its purest sense. The end of inhibitions. The conquest of weakness of your too human flesh with all its sentiment.

England is a cesspit. England is the breeding ground of fundamentalist Muslims. Its social logic is to allow all religions to preach openly. But this is illogic, because none of the other religions preach apocalyptic violence. And yet England allows it. Remember, that country was the breeding ground for communism, too. Karl Marx did all his work in libraries there....We should assemble all those who are pure and cannot abide other faiths, put them all in rockets, and fire them into space.....A virus has attacked the world of sense and sensibility, and it has spread to Nigeria....The assumption of power over life and death then passed to every single inconsequential Muslim in the world-as if someone had given them a new stature...Al Qaeda is the descendent of this phenomenon. The proselytization of Islam became vigorous after this. People went to Saudi Arabia. Madrassas were established everywhere.

Ideas, like everything else, can be corrupted. Power is like that: it pollutes everything it touches.

I do not hate progress, only its nature / Which makes all roofs and faces look the same.