Wole Soyinka Quotes

My secret is my eternal burden—to pierce the encrustations of soul-deadening habit, and bare the mirror of original nakedness—knowing full well, it is all futility.

Envy, but not from prowess of his adze.

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

What are you? Men have killed for me. Men have died for me. Have you flints in your eye? Fool, have you never lived?"

When your business men ruin the lesser ones, do you go crying to them? I also have no pity for the one who invested foolishly. Investors, that is all they ever were—to me.

Now what am I thinking of? I must be getting tired. No sensible man burns the house to cook a little yam.

Trouble me no further. The fooleries of beings whom I have fashioned closer to me weary and distress me. Yet I must persist, knowing that nothing is ever altered. My secret is my eternal burden—to pierce the encrustations of soul-deadening habit, and bare the mirror of original nakedness—knowing full well, it is all futility.

We must remember that the only true giants are those who walk with the people, not over them.

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

Power is transient, but the deeds of those who wield it can leave an indelible mark on history.

We are the giants who bestride the world like a colossus, while others are mere mortals.

The ground that man walks on, has it not always been there?

Man is a bird without wings and a tree without roots.

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!

It is time to commence the mental shifts for admittance to yet another irrational world of adults and their discipline