List of top 100 famous quotes and sayings about wole soyinka to read and share with friends on your Facebook, Twitter, blogs.
Top 100 Quotes About Wole Soyinka
#1. No human is completely fearless.
#2. I like my peace and quiet whenever I can grab it.
#3. Let's say there are prospects for a new Nigeria, but I don't think we have a new Nigeria yet.
#4. As far as the regime is concerned, well, the play is sheer terror for them. Because they feel, How dare - how dare anybody lift his or her voice in criticism against us? We have the guns. Their level of paranoia and power-drunkenness is unbelievable.
#5. I never hesitated, as a student, in embracing the necessity of violence. In South Africa, I didn't just accept it; I looked forward to it as a mission.
#6. Well, first of all I'll say that I come alive best in theater.
#7. Each time I think I've created time for myself, along comes a throwback to disrupt my private space.
#8. An excessive amount of my time is taken with political involvement. It's unavoidable; that's my temperament.
#9. There's a kind of dynamic quality about theater and that dynamic quality expresses itself in relation to, first of all, the environment in which it's being staged; then the audience, the nature of the audience, the quality of the audience.
#10. As I grew older and more mature, I've been able to move beyond the immediate response of violence to a projection of the pragmatic, political consequences of that violence. So it's an effort to attain equilibrium.
#11. My father used to tell me stories before I fell asleep. When the children would gather, at a certain point, I had a tendency to make up my own elementary variations on stories I had heard, or to invent totally new ones.
#12. I'm not one of those writers I learned about who get up in the morning, put a piece of paper in their typewriter machine and start writing. That I've never understood.
#13. I began writing early - very, very early ... I was already writing short stories for the radio and selling poems to poetry and art festivals; I was involved in school plays; I wrote essays, so there was no definite moment when I said, 'Now I'm a writer.' I've always been a writer.
#14. I said: "A tiger does not proclaim his tigritude, he pounces". In other words: a tiger does not stand in the forest and say: "I am a tiger". When you pass where the tiger has walked before, you see the skeleton of the duiker, you know that some tigritude has been emanated there.
#15. I don't know any other way to live but to wake up every day armed with my convictions, not yielding them to the threat of danger and to the power and force of people who might despise me.
#16. I know there are writers who get up every morning and sit by their typewriter or word processor or pad of paper and wait to write. I don't function that way. I go through a long period of gestation before I'm even ready to write.
#17. And gradually they're beginning to recognize the fact that there's nothing more secure than a democratic, accountable, and participatory form of government. But it's sunk in only theoretically, it has not yet sunk in completely in practical terms.
#18. Writers and intellectuals have a duty to humanity. It is to insist that the human entity remains the primary asset in overall development; thus, it must be safeguarded.
#19. But theater, because of its nature, both text, images, multimedia effects, has a wider base of communication with an audience. That's why I call it the most social of the various art forms.
#20. For me, justice is the prime condition of humanity.
#21. In Africa, those who have money - businessmen and banks - do not believe in film.
#22. Sadness is twilight's kiss on earth.
#23. Art is solace; art is vision, and when I pick up a literary work, I am a consumer of literature for its own sake.
#24. I am a glutton for tranquility.
#25. A tiger does not shout its tigritude, it acts.
#26. Culture is a matrix of infinite possibilities and choices. From within the same culture matrix we can extract arguments and strategies for the degradation and ennoblement of our species, for its enslavement or liberation, for the suppression of its productive potential or its enhancement.
#27. I love beauty. But I like the beauty accidentally, not dished up, served up on a platter.
#28. If African film makers had one-tenth the amount commanded by film makers the world over - even the amount used by so-called shoestring film makers - I think we would see quite an explosion of African films on the world scene.
#29. Well, some people say I'm pessimistic because I recognize the eternal cycle of evil. All I say is, look at the history of mankind right up to this moment and what do you find?
#30. It's the place to begin, always
to return to home, literally.
#31. You cannot live a normal existence if you haven't taken care of a problem that affects your life and affects the lives of others, values that you hold which in fact define your very existence.
#32. My father was a schoolteacher, and so I had the advantage of both western educational instruction in the school, as well as what you might call the process of imbibing the traditional processes of education instruction around me.
#33. See, even despite pious statements to the contrary, much of the industrialized world has not yet come to terms with the recognition of the fallacy of what I call the strong man syndrome.
#34. There is not a special imposition on writers to be activists. All that does is encourage writers to write propaganda. Propaganda can be written by anybody, including dictators.
#35. In the world of literature, I see prizes as more of a duty to the craft itself, rather than as something for the individual.
#36. I cannot belong to a nation which permits such barbarities as stoning to death and amputation - I don't care what religion it is.
#37. The hand that dips into the bottom of the pot will eat the biggest snail.
#38. I am convinced that Nigeria would have been a more highly developed country without the oil. I wished we'd never smelled the fumes of petroleum.
#39. I've done a lot of guerrilla theater in my time.
#40. Be yourself. Ultimately just be yourself.
#41. The Lagos of my childhood was a well-laid-out maritime city.
#42. A tiger doesn't proclaim his tigritude, he pounces
#43. Writing in certain environments carries with it an occupational risk.
#44. Books and all forms of writing have always been objects of terror to those who seek to suppress the truth.
#45. Obasanjo has openly endorsed violence as a means of governance, embraced and empowered individuals whose avowed declarations, confessions and acts are cynically contrary to the mandate that alone upholds the legitimacy and dignity of his office.
#46. Writers who open up horizons for other people are performing a function every bit as important as a consciously politicized writer.
#47. I don't have the sort of temperament that submits to Christianity or Islam.
#48. We Nigerians must reclaim our sovereignty, our civic entitlements.
#49. Some people think the Nobel Prize makes you bullet-proof. I never had that illusion.
#50. The writer is the visionary of his people ... He anticipates, he warns.
#51. I don't really consider myself a novelist, it just came out purely by accident.
#52. Trading and religion have always been aligned together in the history of the world, and especially on the African continent.
#53. Even when I'm writing plays I enjoy having company and mentally I think of that company as the company I'm writing for.
#54. The fault, of course, is not in religion, but in the fanatic of every religion. Fanaticism remains the greatest carrier of the spores of fear, and the rhetoric of religion, with the hysteria it so readily generates, is fast becoming the readiest killing device of contemporary times.
#55. The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny
#56. I'm an Afro-realist. I take what comes, and I do my best to affect what is unacceptable in society.
#57. Power is domination, control, and therefore a very selective form of truth which is a lie.
#58. Some of the greatest uprisings and consequent civil wars in Mexico have centered squarely on the ownership of land.
#59. The Sudanese government has been playing games with the world, with the Africa Union, in particular, have been playing for time in order to conclude its mission of ethnic cleansing in the Sudan.
#60. My understanding of the creative process is simply that all cultures and all concerns meet at a certain point, the human point in which everything is related to one another. That has been my creative experience. I never know who's influencing me at any time.
#61. You always assume for some strange reason that you need three meals a day.
#62. The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism.
#63. Under a dictatorship, a nation ceases to exist. All that remains is a fiefdom, a planet of slaves regimented by aliens from outer space.
#64. An idyllic period of my existence was when I had a den attached to my home ... a writing den, and no one had access to that unless they had their own special visa, applied for weeks in advance.
#65. I'm not fond of biographies. I don't like writing about myself.
#66. Rwanda, which is one of the younger independent states in Africa, must be regarded as a model of how great human trauma can be transformed to commence true reconstruction of people. Human trauma can lead to stunted growth and mass withdrawal.
#67. Don't take shadows too seriously. Reality is your only safety. Continue to reject illusion.
#68. One's own self-worth is tied to the worth of the community to which one belongs, which is intimately connected to humanity in general. What happens in Darfur becomes an assault on my own community, and on me as an individual. That's what the human family is all about.
#69. I think that feeling that if one believed absolutely in any cause, then one must have the confidence, the self-certainty, to go through with that particular course of action.
#70. Seven is the magic figure, because that's a symbolic figure of my favorite deity, Ogun.
#71. Military dictatorship, you can focus on it, you can fight it directly. It's a band of power-driven people.
#72. My horizon on humanity is enlarged by reading the writers of poems, seeing a painting, listening to some music, some opera, which has nothing at all to do with a volatile human condition or struggle or whatever. It enriches me as a human being.
#73. Romance is the sweetening of the soul
With fragrance offered by the stricken heart.
#74. I found, when I left, that there were others who felt the same way. We'd meet, they'd come and seek me out, we'd talk about the future. And I found that their depression and pessimism was every bit as acute as mine.
#75. No writer has a right to make that much money. Indeed, without diabolical assistance, no writer can.
#76. Well, the first thing is that truth and power for me form an antithesis, an antagonism, which will hardly ever be resolved. I can define in fact, can simplify the history of human society, the evolution of human society, as a contest between power and freedom.
#77. Suddenly the world has run amok and left you alone and sane behind
#78. I'm not sure I'm trying to communicate a message. I'm just trying to be part of the movement away from the unacceptable present.
#79. The phenomenon of creativity, we know, is closely related to the ability to yoke together separate, and even seemingly incompatible, matrices.
#80. Politics, I believe, is a full-time occupation.
#81. The Mind is the sole coefficient of Time and Space. - Wole Soyinka
#82. For now, let us simply observe that the assault on human dignity is one of the prime goals of the visitation of fear, a prelude to the domination of the mind and the triumph of power
#83. Writers are human. I shudder to think how I must sometimes appear to others.
#84. I take friendship very seriously.
#85. For the fire consumes all but the arsonist.
#86. I ceased using words like optimism and pessimism a long time ago.
#87. Education is lacking in most of those who pontificate.
#88. If man cannot, what god dare claim perfection?
#89. There's no way to escape the culture that has evolved, from which we ourselves have evolved. Naturally, we stress it, break it up, reassemble it to suit our own needs. But it is there - a source of vital strength.
#90. All religions accept that there is something called 'criminality.' And criminality cannot be excused by religious fervour.
#91. The problem with literature, with writing, is that it works sometimes in terms of correction of social ills. Other times, it just does not suffice.
#92. Probably to me the greatest singer, female voice, is Billie Holiday. And one of the most moving for me, I don't know why - maybe it's nostalgia, maybe because my life is one of constant partying, whatever.
#93. The blatant aggressiveness of theocracies I find distressing, because I grew up when Christians, Muslim and animists lived peacefully together.
#94. I've always written plays for the purpose of getting something out of my system.
#95. Today, the constituency of fear has become much broader, far less selective
#96. A human feast is an indifferent morsel to a god.
#97. Some African leaders actually dare to suggest that democracy is a concept alien to traditional African society. This is one of the most impudent political blasphemies I can think of.
#98. The novel, for me, was an accident. I really don't consider myself a novelist.
#99. Before you're a writer, you're a citizen, a human being, and therefore the weapons of the citizen are at your disposal to use or not use.
#100. If you believe in democracy, are you not thereby obliged to accept, without discrimination, the fall-outs that come with a democratic choice, even if this means the termination of the democratic process itself?
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