Top 100 Soyinka Quotes
#1. The Mind is the sole coefficient of Time and Space. - Wole Soyinka
Majemite Jaboro
#2. SOYINKA WON THE NOBEL PRIZE
ACHEBE, LITERARY COMMANDER
P.D. JAMES, WE LOVE HER
AGATHA CHRISTIE, QUEEN OF CRIME
S.A. David
#3. Romance is the sweetening of the soul
With fragrance offered by the stricken heart.
Wole Soyinka
#4. The writer is the visionary of his people ... He anticipates, he warns.
Wole Soyinka
#5. 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.
Wole Soyinka
#6. Military dictatorship, you can focus on it, you can fight it directly. It's a band of power-driven people.
Wole Soyinka
#7. Seven is the magic figure, because that's a symbolic figure of my favorite deity, Ogun.
Wole Soyinka
#8. 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.
Wole Soyinka
#9. 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.
Wole Soyinka
#10. Don't take shadows too seriously. Reality is your only safety. Continue to reject illusion.
Wole Soyinka
#11. 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.
Wole Soyinka
#12. I'm not fond of biographies. I don't like writing about myself.
Wole Soyinka
#13. 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.
Wole Soyinka
#14. Under a dictatorship, a nation ceases to exist. All that remains is a fiefdom, a planet of slaves regimented by aliens from outer space.
Wole Soyinka
#15. The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism.
Wole Soyinka
#16. You always assume for some strange reason that you need three meals a day.
Wole Soyinka
#17. 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.
Wole Soyinka
#18. 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.
Wole Soyinka
#19. Some of the greatest uprisings and consequent civil wars in Mexico have centered squarely on the ownership of land.
Wole Soyinka
#20. Power is domination, control, and therefore a very selective form of truth which is a lie.
Wole Soyinka
#21. I'm an Afro-realist. I take what comes, and I do my best to affect what is unacceptable in society.
Wole Soyinka
#22. The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny
Wole Soyinka
#23. 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.
Wole Soyinka
#24. Even when I'm writing plays I enjoy having company and mentally I think of that company as the company I'm writing for.
Wole Soyinka
#25. Trading and religion have always been aligned together in the history of the world, and especially on the African continent.
Wole Soyinka
#26. I don't really consider myself a novelist, it just came out purely by accident.
Wole Soyinka
#27. 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.
Wole Soyinka
#28. Education is lacking in most of those who pontificate.
Wole Soyinka
#29. The novel, for me, was an accident. I really don't consider myself a novelist.
Wole Soyinka
#30. 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.
Wole Soyinka
#31. A human feast is an indifferent morsel to a god.
Wole Soyinka
#32. Today, the constituency of fear has become much broader, far less selective
Wole Soyinka
#33. I've always written plays for the purpose of getting something out of my system.
Wole Soyinka
#34. The blatant aggressiveness of theocracies I find distressing, because I grew up when Christians, Muslim and animists lived peacefully together.
Wole Soyinka
#35. 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.
Wole Soyinka
#36. 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.
Wole Soyinka
#37. All religions accept that there is something called 'criminality.' And criminality cannot be excused by religious fervour.
Wole Soyinka
#38. 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.
Wole Soyinka
#39. If man cannot, what god dare claim perfection?
Wole Soyinka
#40. 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.
Wole Soyinka
#41. I ceased using words like optimism and pessimism a long time ago.
Wole Soyinka
#42. For the fire consumes all but the arsonist.
Wole Soyinka
#44. Writers are human. I shudder to think how I must sometimes appear to others.
Wole Soyinka
#45. 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
Wole Soyinka
#46. Politics, I believe, is a full-time occupation.
Wole Soyinka
#47. The phenomenon of creativity, we know, is closely related to the ability to yoke together separate, and even seemingly incompatible, matrices.
Wole Soyinka
#48. 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.
Wole Soyinka
#49. Suddenly the world has run amok and left you alone and sane behind
Wole Soyinka
#50. 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.
Wole Soyinka
#51. No writer has a right to make that much money. Indeed, without diabolical assistance, no writer can.
Wole Soyinka
#52. 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.
Wole Soyinka
#54. Art is solace; art is vision, and when I pick up a literary work, I am a consumer of literature for its own sake.
Wole Soyinka
#56. In Africa, those who have money - businessmen and banks - do not believe in film.
Wole Soyinka
#57. For me, justice is the prime condition of humanity.
Wole Soyinka
#58. 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.
Wole Soyinka
#59. 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.
Wole Soyinka
#60. 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.
Wole Soyinka
#61. 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.
Wole Soyinka
#62. 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.
Wole Soyinka
#63. 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.
Wole Soyinka
#64. 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.
Wole Soyinka
#65. A tiger does not shout its tigritude, it acts.
Wole Soyinka
#66. 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.
Wole Soyinka
#67. 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.
Wole Soyinka
#68. 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.
Wole Soyinka
#69. An excessive amount of my time is taken with political involvement. It's unavoidable; that's my temperament.
Wole Soyinka
#70. Each time I think I've created time for myself, along comes a throwback to disrupt my private space.
Wole Soyinka
#71. Well, first of all I'll say that I come alive best in theater.
Wole Soyinka
#72. 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.
Wole Soyinka
#73. 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.
Wole Soyinka
#74. Let's say there are prospects for a new Nigeria, but I don't think we have a new Nigeria yet.
Wole Soyinka
#75. I like my peace and quiet whenever I can grab it.
Wole Soyinka
#77. The hand that dips into the bottom of the pot will eat the biggest snail.
Wole Soyinka
#78. We Nigerians must reclaim our sovereignty, our civic entitlements.
Wole Soyinka
#79. I don't have the sort of temperament that submits to Christianity or Islam.
Wole Soyinka
#80. Writers who open up horizons for other people are performing a function every bit as important as a consciously politicized writer.
Wole Soyinka
#81. 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.
Wole Soyinka
#82. Books and all forms of writing have always been objects of terror to those who seek to suppress the truth.
Wole Soyinka
#83. Writing in certain environments carries with it an occupational risk.
Wole Soyinka
#84. A tiger doesn't proclaim his tigritude, he pounces
Wole Soyinka
#85. The Lagos of my childhood was a well-laid-out maritime city.
Wole Soyinka
#87. I've done a lot of guerrilla theater in my time.
Wole Soyinka
#88. 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.
Wole Soyinka
#89. Some people think the Nobel Prize makes you bullet-proof. I never had that illusion.
Wole Soyinka
#90. I cannot belong to a nation which permits such barbarities as stoning to death and amputation - I don't care what religion it is.
Wole Soyinka
#91. In the world of literature, I see prizes as more of a duty to the craft itself, rather than as something for the individual.
Wole Soyinka
#92. 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.
Wole Soyinka
#93. 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.
Wole Soyinka
#94. 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.
Wole Soyinka
#95. 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.
Wole Soyinka
#96. It's the place to begin, always
to return to home, literally.
Wole Soyinka
#97. 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?
Wole Soyinka
#98. 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.
Wole Soyinka
#99. I love beauty. But I like the beauty accidentally, not dished up, served up on a platter.
Wole Soyinka
#100. 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.
Wole Soyinka
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