Chinua Achebe Quotes

And theories are no more than fictions which help us to make sense of experience and which are subject to disconfirmation when their explanations are no longer adequate.

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.

Nigeria is what it is because its leaders are not what they should be.

Africa is to Europe as the picture is to Dorian Gray-a carrier onto whom the master unloads his physical & moral deformities

Do you blame a vulture for perching over a carcass?

When a tradition gathers enough strength to go on for centuries, you don't just turn it off one day.

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.

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

When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground.

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.

My son even if you want to fall, at least fall where your bones can be gathered

An artist, in my understanding of the word, should side with the people against the Emperor that oppresses his or her people.

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.

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

When the moon is shining the cripple becomes hungry for a walk

Nigeria has had a complicated colonial history. My work has examined that part of our story extensively.

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!

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.

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.

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

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.

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

...Nothing puzzles God

As our fathers said, you can tell a ripe corn by its look.

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

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.

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.

Once you allow yourself to identify with the people in a story, then you might begin to see yourself in that story even if on the surface it's far removed from your situation.

The singer should sing well even if it is merely to himself, rather than dance badly for the whole world.

What a man does not know is greater than he.

Writers don't give prescriptions. They give headaches!

Democracy is not something you put away for ten years, and then in the 11th year you wake up and start practicing again. We have to begin to learn to rule ourselves again.

A disease that has never been seen before cannot be cured with every-day herbs.

We do not seek to hurt any man, but if any man seeks to hurt us may he break his neck.

My weapon is literature

If you're rooted to a spot, you miss a lot of the grace. So you keep moving, and this is the way I think the world's stories should be told - from many different perspectives.

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.

I grew up recognizing that there was nobody to give me any advice and that you do your best and if it's not good enough, someday you will come to terms with that.

A toad does not run in the daytime for nothing

There was a saying in Umuofia that as a man danced so the drums were beaten for him.

I don't want to be the one to tell somebody, You will not make it, even though I know that the majority of those who come to me with their manuscripts are not really good enough.

A man's life from birth to death was a series of transition rites which brought him nearer and nearer to his ancestors.

When Rimbaud became a slave trader, he stopped writing poetry.

They have not always elected the best leaders, particularly after a long period in which they have not used this facility of free election. You tend to lose the habit.

In such a regime, I say, you died a good death if your life had inspired someone to come forward and shoot your murderer in the chest-without asking to be paid.