Chinua Achebe

Chinua Achebe

Novelist, Poet

Chinua Achebe was a Nigerian novelist and critic, renowned for his novel 'Things Fall Apart,' which explores themes of identity and colonialism in Africa.

Men People Thinking Writing Thought Provoking Stories
Born
November 16, 1930
Quotes
300
Rank
#412

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Chinua Achebe quotes (page 6 of 15)

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"The reality of today, different as it is from the reality of my society one hundred years ago, is and can be important if we have the energy and the inclination to challenge it, to go out and engage with its peculiarities, with the things that we do not understand. The real danger is the tendency to retreat into the obvious, the tendency to be frightened by the richness of the world and to clutch what we always have understood."

Real Years Challenges
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"Africa is people" may seem too simple and too obvious to some of us. But I have found in the course of my travels through the world that the most simple things can still givwe us a lot of trouble, even the brightest among us: this is particularly so in matters concerning Africa."

Simple People World
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"I think back to the old people I knew when I was growing up, and they always seemed larger than life."

Growing Up Thinking People
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"It is praiseworthy to be brave and fearless, but sometimes it is better to be a coward. We often stand in the compound of a coward to point at the ruins where a brave man used to live."

Men Thought Provoking Brave
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"If you don't like someone's story, write your own. If you don't like what somebody says, say what it is you don't like."

Writing Stories Write Your Own
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"The problem with leaderless uprisings taking over is that you don't always know what you get at the other end. If you are not careful you could replace a bad government with one much worse!"

Government Uprising Problem
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"In the vocabulary of certain radical theorists contradictions are given the status of some deadly disease to which their opponents alone can succumb. But contradictions are the very stuff of life. If there had been a little dash of contradiction among the Gadarene swine some of them might have been saved from drowning."

Vocabulary Disease Opponents
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"When I think of the standing, the importance and the erudition of all these people who see nothing about racism in Heart of Darkness, I'm convinced that we must really be living in different worlds."

Heart Thinking Racism
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"We don't want to be simply wandering about without some kind of reason, we want our presence here to have a purpose, and that we are not going to end here, we are going to proceed somewhere else, and also that we didn't begin here, that we began somewhere else and all that living, all that elaborate account of our presence seems to be quite basic to our nature and so this is what literacy taps into."

Somewhere Else Purpose Want
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"You must develop the habit of skepticism, not swallow every piece of superstition you are told by witch-doctors and professors."

Witch Doctors Pieces Superstitions
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"Oh, the most important thing about myself is that my life has been full of changes. Therefore, when I observe the world, I don't expect to see it just like I was seeing the fellow who lives in the next room."

Important World Rooms
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"The most awful thing about power is not that it corrupts absolutely but that it makes people so utterly boring, so predictable."

People Awful Boring
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"...Nothing puzzles God"

Puzzles
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"In Nigeria, there is energy, whether it is Lagos, which is sheer anarchy, but it is not lethargic. It is strong, even aggressive and if that energy could be directed to work it will produce really enormous results."

Strong Energy Anarchy
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"If I hold her hand she says, ‘Don’t touch!’ If I hold her foot she says ‘Don’t touch!’ But when I hold her waist-beads she pretends not to know."

Hands Feet Beads
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"Just think of the work you've set yourself to do, and do it as well as you can."

Thinking Wells
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"We shall all live. We pray for life, children, a good harvest and happiness. You will have what is good for you and I will have what is good for me. Let the kite perch and let the egret perch too. If one says no to the other, let his wing break."

Children Wings Kites
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"It is the storyteller who makes us what we are, who creates history. The storyteller creates the memory that the survivors must have - otherwise their surviving would have no meaning."

Memories Survivor Storyteller
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