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Chinua Achebe

Chinua Achebe Quotes

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Famous Chinua Achebe Quotes

“The Novelist As Teacher”: “I would be quite satisfied if my novels (especially the ones I set in the past) did no more than teach my readers that their past – with all its imperfections – was not one long night of savagery from which the first Europeans acting on God’s behalf delivered them.”

IfsFirstsLongWould BePastNightActingTeachNovelTeacherReaderSatisfiedNovelistsImperfectionBehalfSavageryLong Nights
Book:Things Fall Apart: Authoritative Text, Contexts and Criticism
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“The reality of today, different as it is from the reality of my society one hundred years ago, is and can be important if we have the energy and the inclination to challenge it, to go out and engage with its peculiarities, with the things that we do not understand. The real danger is the tendency to retreat into the obvious, the tendency to be frightened by the richness of the world and to clutch what we always have understood.”

IfsWorldYearsImportantDifferentRealRealityTodayEnergyChallengesDangerUnderstoodHundredYears AgoObviousTendenciesFrightenedRetreatInclinationRichnessClutch
Book:There Was a Country: A Memoir
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“Man is sitting disconsolate on an anthill one morning. God asks him what the matter is and man replies that the soil is too swampy for the cultivation of the yams which God has directed him to grow. God tells him to bring in a blacksmith to dry the soil with his bellows. The contribution of humanity to this creation is so important. God could have made the world perfect if he had wanted. But he made it the way it is. So that there is a constant need for us to discuss and cooperate to make it more habitable, so the soil can yield, you see.”

IfsMenWorldWayNeedsMadeImportantMatterWantedHumanityAsksGrowsPerfectMorningCreationSittingConstantMade ItDryContributionSoilYieldCultivationBlacksmithsYams
Author:Chinua Achebe
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“"You sound as if you question the authority and the decision of the Oracle, who said he should die." "I do not. Why should I? But the Oracle did not ask me to carry out its decision." [...] "The Earth cannot punish me for obeying her mesenger," Okonkwo said. "A child's fingers are not scalded by a piece of hot yam which its mother puts into its palm."”

IfsShouldChildrenSaidEarthMotherDiesAsksSoundDecisionPiecesAuthorityHotFingersAsk MeShould IPalmsObeyingOraclesThings Fall Apart OkonkwoYamsOkonkwo
Author:Chinua Achebe
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“In the vocabulary of certain radical theorists contradictions are given the status of some deadly disease to which their opponents alone can succumb. But contradictions are the very stuff of life. If there had been a little dash of contradiction among the Gadarene swine some of them might have been saved from drowning.”

IfsLittlesHas BeensMightCertainGivenStuffDiseaseSavedRadicalOpponentsContradictionVocabularyMight Have BeenDrowningTheoristsSwineDeadly Diseases
Book:Anthills of the Savannah
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“Colonial rule means that power, initiative is taken away from you by somebody else who makes your decisions. If that goes on long enough, beyond one generation, then the habit of self-rule is forgotten. People are no longer able to realize what it means. To be dependant for a hundred years! And suddenly when this thing ends there is nobody who actually knows how to set about running the country.”

PeopleIfsKnowsYearsMeanLongEndsSelfCountryEnoughRunningAbleRealizingDecisionKnow HowTakenGenerationsGoes OnHabitHundredForgottenInitiativeAway From You
Author:Chinua Achebe
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“Those who are talking sharia in Nigeria are really just politicians exploiting what they think is available. But if it should turn out that there are in fact whole sections of the country which believe that it is legitimate to chop off peoples hands because they stole a hen - if that should really turn out to be the genuine belief of responsible, educated people in the North than I would say there is no chance. But I do not believe that is the case. The sharia was always there but it was never force onto non-Muslims and it was not ever applied in the area of criminal law.”

PeopleIfsThinkingShouldBelieveCountryWholeFactsHandsLawTurnsBeliefForceChanceTalkingCasesPoliticianAreasResponsibleAvailableCriminalsGenuineEducatedSectionsNigeriaHensCriminal LawSharia
Author:Chinua Achebe
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“If I say look unless you change your leaders I will not give you any aid, you are likely to have people who say: "To the hell with you, we will struggle on the way but we will do it". Therefore what I am saying is - and I do not whether it is coming through clearly - there has to be a lot of care exercised by the people who are in the position to give or withhold assistance: if they start throwing their weight around, using extreme language, seeming to order other nations to do their bidding, then there will not be a good result, it will not be done.”

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Author:Chinua Achebe
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“If the economy of a country collapses completely and the hospitals are no longer able to function as hospitals, it will be very difficult to tell every doctor to stay home to work without drugs, to work without equipment. You might tell some to stay but there a lot of young people who are at the beginning of their careers who would be very difficult to persuade.”

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Author:Chinua Achebe
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“Art is created to make us, to make our passage through the world better, fruitful - and I would say that every story in the end, if it is good, tells us something. This is actually what I meant when I said a novelist is a teacher. Which is why I am constantly dealing with "didactic". Now a teacher in the sense I use it is not somebody who has the profession of standing in front of children, with a piece of chalk in his hand scribbling on the blackboard. That is not the teacher I have in mind. The teacher I have in mind is something less tangible.”

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Author:Chinua Achebe
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“What has happened to Africa is very severe. We are talking about the collapse of this and the collapse of that, of good government, of the economy particularly. And this has hit education badly. The news you get from the universities in Nigeria is often appalling. I don't think a lot of it gets out. There is the obsession with cults and all kinds of dreadful things going on and all this is taking its toll and it is not surprising that quality of students and graduates who come out is not good. It will not be surprising if this shows in the quality of work they do.”

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Author:Chinua Achebe
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