Wole Soyinka Quotes

The descendants of our great forebears...let them symbolize all that is noble in our nation."

God rot your coward bones! Do you think not enough people die here that you must come and threaten me with death. You spurious spew. You instrument of mortgage. You unlicensed appendage of the steering wheel...

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

A tiger doesn't proclaim his tigritude, he pounces

Adenebi becomes defensive and says, "Have you no feeling for those who died?"

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

The very least we can live with is an agreement that does not reduce us to slaves of imposition, but makes us partners of consent.

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

When the dog hides a bone does he not throw up sand?

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!

But then I am a woman. I have a woman’s longings and weaknesses.

When you see a man hurrying, he has got a load on his back. Do you think I live emptily that I will take another's cause for pay or mercy?

I said: "A tiger does not proclaim his tigritude, he pounces". In other words: a tiger does not stand in the forest and say: "I am a tiger". When you pass where the tiger has walked before, you see the skeleton of the duiker, you know that some tigritude has been emanated there.

Moreover, I will admit, / It solves the problem of her bride-price too. / A man must live or fall by his true / Principles. That, I had sworn, / Never to pay.

The greedy dog! Insatiate camel of a foolish, doting race.