Quote collection
300 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"You cannot plant greatness as you plant yams or maize. Who ever planted an iroko tree — the greatest tree in the forest? You may collect all the iroko seeds in the world, open the soil and put them there. It will be in vain. The great tree chooses where to grow and we find it there, so it is with the greatness in men."
"Procrastination is a lazy man's apology."
"When old people speak it is not because of the sweetness of words in our mouths; it is because we see something which you do not see."
"A man who makes trouble for others is also making trouble for himself."
"An old woman is always uneasy when dry bones are mentioned in a proverb"
"Only the story can continue beyond the war and the warrior. The story outlives the sound of the war drum... The story is our escort. Without it we are blind... It is the thing that sets us apart from cattle."
"Every generation must find its mission and fulfill it, as Fanon said - or betray it. So it is not something that you can write up on the wall, saying this is what has to be done. Every generation has to discover what it needs to do."
"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."
"For people who are coming out of an oral tradition, it is very exciting to get into reading and writing and it is quite interesting how frequently people want to write their own story. Sometimes it is straight history - this is how we came about, how our town was created, a lot of that kind of effort, as soon as literacy came. The first thing you wanted to do was to put something down about who you are or how you are related to you neighbors. Then the next stage would be the stories, the cultural part of the story: this is the kind of world our ancestors made or aspired to."
"In fact, I thought that Christianity was very a good and a very valuable thing for us. But after a while, I began to feel that the story that I was told about this religion wasn't perhaps completely whole, that something was left out."
"I did not think of writing as a career and I don't think that I did this ever really, but I think of writing as something that I could do, I should do alongside whatever else I was doing. It simply grew on me."
"To answer oppression with appropriate resistance requires knowledge of two kinds: in the first place, self-knowledge by the victim, which means awareness that oppression exists, an awareness that the victim has fallen from a great height of glory or promise into the present depths; secondly, the victim must know who the enemy is. He must know his oppressor's real name, not an alias, a pseudonym, or a nom de plume!"
"When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground."
"My son even if you want to fall, at least fall where your bones can be gathered"
"There is a certain increase in the importance I assign to women in getting us out of the mess that we are in, which is a reflection of the role of women in my traditional culture - that they do not interfere in politics until men really make such a mess that the society is unable to go backward or forward. Then women will move in."
"An artist, in my understanding of the word, should side with the people against the Emperor that oppresses his or her people."
"My books have done extremely well, I know. But I don't honestly feel much different from when I began to write. I still think we have a long way to go. I suppose my name means more in Nigeria today than it did five years ago. But I feel the job that literature should do in our community has not even started. It's not yet part of the life of the nation. We are still at the beginning. It's a big beginning, because now we are catching the next generation in the schools. When I was their age, I had nothing to read that had any relevance to my own environment."
"Every lizard lies on its belly, so we cannot tell which has a belly-ache"
"A debt may get mouldy, but it never decays."
"It has always been quite apparent to me that no important story can fail to tell us something of value to us."