Quote collection
300 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"The impatient idealist says: 'Give me a place to stand and I shall move the earth.' But such a place does not exist. We all have to stand on the earth itself and go with her at her pace."
"There is a moral obligation, I think, not to ally oneself with power against the powerless."
"A functioning, robust democracy requires a healthy educated, participatory followership, and an educated, morally grounded leadership."
"The sun will shine on those who stand before it shines on those who kneel under them."
"People go to Africa and confirm what they already have in their heads and so they fail to see what is there in front of them. This is what people have come to expect. Its not viewed as a serious continent. Its a place of strange, bizarre and illogical things, where people dont do what common sense demands."
"There is no story that is not true."
"We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own."
"A man of worth never gets up to unsay what he said yesterday."
"When suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool."
"You might as well say that the woman lies on top of the man when they are making the babies."
"Privilege, you see, is one of the great adversaries of the imagination; it spreads a thick layer of adipose tissue over our sensitivity."
"...when we are comfortable and inattentive, we run the risk of committing grave injustices absentmindedly."
"If you have leaders who are prepared to incite group against group it is very easy to manufacture reasons and excuses."
"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 mad man walks naked, it is his kinsmen who feel shame, not himself."
"Writing is like wrestling; you are wrestling with ideas and with the story. There is a lot of energy required. At the same time, it is exciting. So it is both difficult and easy. What you must accept is that your life is not going to be the same while you are writing. I have said in the kind of exaggerated manner of writers and prophets that writing, for me, is like receiving a term of imprisonment-you know that's what you're in for, for whatever time it takes."
"Ogbuef Ezedudu,who was the oldest man in the village, was telling two other men when they came to visit him that the punishment for breaking the Peace of Ani had become very mild in their clan. "It has not always been so," he said. "My father told me that he had been told that in the past a man who broke the peace was dragged on the ground through the village until he died. but after a while this custom was stopped because it spoiled the peace which it was meant to preserve."
"Nobody can teach me who I am."
"Now one of the changes that must come to Africa is the idea of limited rule, I mean in term of how long one leader can stay in power. The era of president for life is not gone yet but it is on its way out and that is one of the problems with Mugabe and others."
"As a rule I don't like suffering to no purpose. Suffering should be creative, should give birth to something good and lovely."