Quotessence
Home / Authors / Chinua Achebe
Chinua Achebe

Chinua Achebe Quotes

Novelist

Filter quotes by topic

AllIfsMenPeopleStoriesThinkingWritingWorldShouldWayThings Fall Apart OkonkwoKnowsThought ProvokingNigeriaWantDifferentThings Fall Apart ImportantSaidKindLanguageChildren

Famous Chinua Achebe Quotes

“We must now turn from considering the necessary struggle with language arising, as it were, from its very nature and the nature of the society it serves to the more ominous threat to its integrity brought about neither by its innate inadequacy nor yet by the incompetence and carelessness of its ordinary users, but rather engineered deliberately by those who will manipulate words for their own ends.”

EndsTurnsLanguageStruggleIntegrityOrdinaryThreatUsersConsideringManipulateInnateIncompetenceInadequacyCarelessnessOminous
Book:Hopes and impediments: selected essays
Create image

“The ordinary Nigerians have lived as neighbors down the millennia. I was talking about the British who came and merged a whole number of mini states and big states into one unit. But those people were always there, and they always managed to live side by side with their neighbours. So they were not owned or run by one kingdom. It was not practically impossible for these people when they have different languages and religions to be neighbors. So it is that habit of neighbourliness which is destroyed and put under great strain again and again when you have things like massacres.”

PeopleDifferentStatesWholeBigsRunningLanguageSidesNumbersTalkingImpossibleHabitOrdinaryBritishNeighborKingdomsDestroyedAgain And AgainUnitsStrainNeighbourMassacresDifferent Languages
Author:Chinua Achebe
Create image

“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.”

PeopleIfsWayGivingLooksDoneCareOrderLanguageNationsResultsLeaderStruggleHellPositionWeightExtremesAidsThrowingAssistanceSeemingBidding
Author:Chinua Achebe
Create image

“I think that is one of the first things that I got clear in my mind when I began to play around with fiction, that I had to find a language and it was not in existance at the time. You have put it very well - it wasn't to be taken for granted. You had to go on and search until you found a way through the conversation of English and Igbo. The two languages stuck into each other and tried to find a way to express through one, the medium of the thoughts. That's a very exciting thing to do, a very difficult thing to do.”

ThinkingWayMindFirstsWellsTwoPlayFoundLanguageDifficultFictionTakenClearGoes OnConversationExcitingStuckMediumsGrantedThings To DoDifficult ThingsTaken For GrantedExciting Things
Author:Chinua Achebe
Create image

“The price a world language must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of use. The African writer should aim to use English in a way that brings out his message best without altering the language to the extent that its value as a medium of international exchange will be lost. He should aim at fashioning out an English which is at once universal and able to carry his peculiar experience.”

WorldWayShouldKindDifferentUseAbleValuesLostLanguagePayMessagesUniversalAimPreparedInternationalMediumsPeculiarDifferent KindsBe PreparedSubmission
Author:Chinua Achebe
Create image