Chinua Achebe. Quotes

In dealing with a man who thinks you are a fool, it is good sometimes to remind him that you know what he knows but have chosen to appear foolish for the sake of peace.

There is that great proverb — that until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.

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.

People say that if you find water rising up to your ankle, that's the time to do something about it, not when it's around your neck.

Become familiar with your home, but know also about your neighbors. The young man who never went anywhere thinks his mother is the greatest cook.

The damage done in one year can sometimes take ten or twenty years to repair.

When brothers fight to death a stranger inherit their father’s estate

If you only hear one side of the story, you have no understanding at all.

As long as one people sit on another and are deaf to their cry, so long will understanding and peace elude all of us.

One of the truest tests of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised.

The world is like a Mask dancing. If you want to see it well, you do not stand in one place.

A man who pays respect to the great paves the way for his own greatness

Every generation must recognize and embrace the task it is peculiarly designed by history and by providence to perform.

A goat does not eat into a hen's stomach no matter how friendly the two may be.

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.

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.

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.

If you have leaders who are prepared to incite group against group it is very easy to manufacture reasons and excuses.

Nobody can teach me who I am.

As a rule I don't like suffering to no purpose. Suffering should be creative, should give birth to something good and lovely.

Charity . . . is the opium of the privileged.

When a coward sees a man he can beat he becomes hungry for a fight.

The price a world language must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of use.

What a country needs to do is be fair to all its citizens - whether people are of a different ethnicity or gender.

Whatever music you beat on your drum there is somebody who can dance to it.

Art is man's constant effort to create for himself a different order of reality from that which is given to him.

Among the Igbo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten.

People create stories create people; or rather stories create people create stories.

Literature, whether handed down by word or mouth or in print, gives us a second handle on reality.

The only thing we have learnt from experience is that we learn nothing from experience.

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.

The whole idea of a stereotype is to simplify. Instead of going through the problem of all this great diversity - that it's this or maybe that - you have just one large statement; it is this.

An artist in my view is always afraid of extremists; he is always afraid of those who claim to have found the ultimate solution to any question.

An angry man is always a stupid man.

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.

Dancing is very important nowadays. No girl will look at you if you can't dance.

If you don't like someone's story, write your own.

There is no story that is not true, [...] The world has no end, and what is good among one people is an abomination with others.

No man however great is greater than his people

Living fire begets cold, impotent ash.

The lizard that jumped from a high Iroko tree to the ground said he would praise himself if no-one else did.