Chinua Achebe Quotes
Top 100 wise famous quotes and sayings by Chinua Achebe
Chinua Achebe Famous Quotes & Sayings
Discover top inspirational quotes from Chinua Achebe on Wise Famous Quotes.
The women are, of course, the biggest single group of oppressed people in the world and, if we are to believe the Book of Genesis, the very oldest.
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.
When a man is at peace with his gods and ancestors, his harvest will be good or bad according to the strength of his arm.
[H]e developed a private philosophy of total self-reliance, an unyielding internal sufficiency that requires no external support from others.
The relationship with my people, the Nigerian people, is very good. My relationship with the rulers has always been problematic.
You must develop the habit of skepticism, not swallow every piece of superstition you are told by witch-doctors and professors.
I don't care about age very much. I think back to the old people I knew when I was growing up, and they always seemed larger than life.
Eneke the bird says that since men have learned to shoot without missing, he has learned to fly without perching.
Fortunately, among these people a man was judged according to his worth and not according to the worth of his father.
When I began going to school and learned to read, I encountered stories of other people and other lands.
As a rule I don't like suffering to no purpose. Suffering should be creative, should give birth to something good and lovely.
Privilege, you see, is one of the great adversaries of the imagination; it spreads a thick layer of adipose tissue over our sensitivity.
A man's life from birth to death was a series of transition rites which brought him nearer and nearer to his ancestors.
Men have learned to shoot without missing their mark and I have learned to fly without perching on a twig.
As long as one people sit on another and are deaf to their cry, so long will understanding and peace elude all of us.
The emperor would prefer the poet to keep away from politics, the emperor's domain, so that he can manage things the way he likes.
The writer cannot expect to be excused from the task of re-education and re-generation that must be done. In fact, he should march right in front.
The singer should sing well even if it is merely to himself, rather than dance badly for the whole world.
I am against people reaping where they have not sown. But we have a saying that if you want to eat a toad you should look for a fat and juicy one.
After a war life catches desperately at passing hints of normalcy like vines entwining a hollow twig.
What a country needs to do is be fair to all its citizens - whether people are of a different ethnicity or gender.
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.
Among the Ibo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten. Okoye
Stories are not always innocent; ... they can be used to put you in the wrong crowd, in the party of the man who has come to dispossess you.
Each of my books is different. Deliberately ... I wanted to create my society, my people, in their fullness.
Nobody can teach me who I am. You can describe parts of me, but who I am - and what I need - is something I have to find out myself.
Looking at a king's mouth, ' said an old man, 'one would think he never sucked at his mother's breast.
People from different parts of the world can respond to the same story if it says something to them about their own history and their own experience.
Age was respected among his people, but achievement was revered. As the elders said, if a child washed his hands he could eat with kings.
Americans, it seems to me, tend to protect their children from the harshness of life, in their interest.
Ghana and Nigeria resented each other and competed for supremacy in every sphere - politics, academia, sports, you name it.
The man that brings ant-infested faggots into his hut should not grumble when lizards begin to pay him a visit.
No matter how prosperous a man was, if he was unable to rule his women and his children (and especially his women) he was not really a man.
You do not know me,' said Tortoise. 'I am a changed man. I have learned that a man who makes trouble for others makes trouble for himself.
Art is man's constant effort to create for himself a different order of reality from that which is given to him.
An artist, in my understanding of the word, should side with the people against the Emperor that oppresses his or her people.
Africa is to Europe as the picture is to Dorian Gray-a carrier onto whom the master unloads his physical & moral deformities