70 Famous Quotes by Chinua Achebe
Chinua Achebe was a Nigerian author and poet who is best known for his novel "Things Fall Apart." The book, which is widely regarded as a masterpiece of African literature, tells the story of a Nigerian village and its people during the colonial era. Achebe's work was groundbreaking in its portrayal of African culture and its rejection of European stereotypes and colonialism. His writing helped to establish a new African literary tradition and inspired a generation of African writers and thinkers. (Chinua Achebe Biography).
Chinua Achebe Famous Quotes
One of the truest tests of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised (Meaning)
A functioning, robust democracy requires a healthy educated, participatory followership, and an educated, morally grounded leadership. (Meaning)
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. (Meaning)
It's not difficult to identify with somebody like yourself, somebody next door who looks like you. What's more difficult is to identify with someone you don't see, who's very far away, who's a different color, who eats a different kind of food. When you begin to do that then literature is really performing its wonders. (Meaning)
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. (Meaning)
One of the truest tests of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised. (Meaning)
When a coward sees a man he can beat he becomes hungry for a fight. (Meaning)
If you don't like someone's story, write your own. (Meaning)
A man who pays respect to the great paves the way for his own greatness (Meaning)
Procrastination is a lazy man's apology. (Meaning)
The damage done in one year can sometimes take ten or twenty years to repair. (Meaning)
An angry man is always a stupid man. (Meaning)
The sun will shine on those who stand before it shines on those who kneel under them. (Meaning)
A child cannot pay for its mother’s milk. (Meaning)
The only thing we have learnt from experience is that we learn nothing from experience. (Meaning)
Nobody can teach me who I am. (Meaning)
There is no story that is not true. (Meaning)
If a child washed his hands, he could eat with kings. (Meaning)
Let the kite perch and let the eagle perch too – If one says no to the other, let his wing break. (Meaning)
If one finger brings oil it soils the others. (Meaning)
When mother-cow is chewing grass its young ones watch its mouth (Meaning)
An old woman is always uneasy when dry bones are mentioned in a proverb (Meaning)
As our fathers said, you can tell a ripe corn by its look. (Meaning)
Living fire begets cold, impotent ash. (Meaning)
One of the truest tests of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised
A functioning, robust democracy requires a healthy educated, participatory followership, and an educated, morally grounded leadership.
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.
I tell my students, it's not difficult to identify with somebody like yourself, somebody next door who looks like you. What's more difficult is to identify with someone you don't see, who's very far away, who's a different color, who eats a different kind of food. When you begin to do that then literature is really performing its wonders.
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.
The last four or five hundred years of European contact with Africa produced a body of literature that presented Africa in a very bad light and Africans in very lurid terms. The reason for this had to do with the need to justify the slave trade and slavery.
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.
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.
Nigeria has had a complicated colonial history. My work has examined that part of our story extensively.
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.
The damage done in one year can sometimes take ten or twenty years to repair.
Democracy is not something you put away for ten years, and then in the th year you wake up and start practicing again. We have to begin to learn to rule ourselves again.
A man who makes trouble for others is also making trouble for himself.
What a country needs to do is be fair to all its citizens - whether people are of a different ethnicity or gender.
People create stories create people; or rather stories create people create stories.
The people you see in Nigeria today have always lived as neighbors in the same space for as long as we can remember. So it's a matter of settling down, lowering the rhetoric, the level of hostility in the rhetoric is too high.
Art is man's constant effort to create for himself a different order of reality from that which is given to him.
The only thing we have learnt from experience is that we learn nothing from experience.
An artist, in my understanding of the word, should side with the people against the Emperor that oppresses his or her people.
I don't care about age very much. I think back to the old people I knew when I was growing up, and they always seemed larger than life.
I've had trouble now and again in Nigeria because I have spoken up about the mistreatment of factions in the country because of difference in religion. These are things we should put behind us.
I don't care about age very much.
People from different parts of the world can respond to the same story if it says something to them about their own history and their own experience.
When the British came to Ibo land, for instance, at the beginning of the 0th century, and defeated the men in pitched battles in different places, and set up their administrations, the men surrendered. And it was the women who led the first revolt.
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.
But I liked Yeats! That wild Irishman. I really loved his love of language, his flow. His chaotic ideas seemed to me just the right thing for a poet. Passion! He was always on the right side. He may be wrongheaded, but his heart was always on the right side. He wrote beautiful poetry.
The relationship with my people, the Nigerian people, is very good. My relationship with the rulers has always been problematic.
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. This is what I try to tell my students: this is one great thing that literature can do - it can make us identify with situations and people far away.
Once a novel gets going and I know it is viable, I don't then worry about plot or themes. These things will come in almost automatically because the characters are now pulling the story.
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.
Nigera is what it is because its leaders are not what they should be.
Stories serve the purpose of consolidating whatever gains people or their leaders have made or imagine they have made in their existing journey thorough the world.
Presidents do not go off on leave without telling the country.
I think back to the old people I knew when I was growing up, and they always seemed larger than life.
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.
My parents were early converts to Christianity in my part of Nigeria. They were not just converts; my father was an evangelist, a religious teacher. He and my mother traveled for thirty-five years to different parts of Igboland, spreading the gospel.
I was a supporter of the desire, in my section of Nigeria, to leave the federation because it was treated very badly with something that was called genocide in those days.
I liked Yeats! That wild Irishman. I really loved his love of language, his flow. His chaotic ideas seemed to me just the right thing for a poet. Passion! He was always on the right side. He may be wrongheaded, but his heart was always on the right side. He wrote beautiful poetry.
Many writers can't make a living. So to be able to teach how to write is valuable to them. But I don't really know about its value to the student. I don't mean it's useless. But I wouldn't have wanted anyone to teach me how to write.
My position is that serious and good art has always existed to help, to serve, humanity. Not to indict. I don't see how art can be called art if its purpose is to frustrate humanity.
I think an artist, in my definition of that word, would not be someone who takes sides with the emperor against his powerless subjects. That's different from prescribing a way in which a writer should write.
There's no lack of writers writing novels in America, about America. Therefore, it seems to me it would be wasteful for me to add to that huge number of people writing here when there are so few people writing about somewhere else.
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.
Each of my books is different. Deliberately... I wanted to create my society, my people, in their fullness.
Americans, it seems to me, tend to protect their children from the harshness of life, in their interest.
I'm a practised writer now. But when I began, I had no idea what this was going to be. I just knew that there was something inside me that wanted me to tell who I was, and that would have come out even if I didn't want it.
― Chinua Achebe Quotes
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Chief Editor
Tal Gur is an author, founder, and impact-driven entrepreneur at heart. After trading his daily grind for a life of his own daring design, he spent a decade pursuing 100 major life goals around the globe. His journey and most recent book, The Art of Fully Living, has led him to found Elevate Society.
