Chinua Achebe Quotes - Page 3

...when we are comfortable and inattentive, we run the risk of committing grave injustices absentmindedly.

When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground.

A child cannot pay for its mother’s milk.

Privilege, you see, is one of the great adversaries of the imagination; it spreads a thick layer of adipose tissue over our sensitivity.

If you have leaders who are prepared to incite group against group it is very easy to manufacture reasons and excuses.

A functioning, robust democracy requires a healthy educated, participatory followership, and an educated, morally grounded leadership.

Just think of the work you've set yourself to do, and do it as well as you can.

Diversity is not an abnormality but the very reality of our planet. The human world manifests the same reality and will not seek our permission to celebrate itself in the magnificence of its endless varieties. Civility is a sensible attribute in this kind of world we have; narrowness of heart and mind is not.

There is a moral obligation, I think, not to ally oneself with power against the powerless.

You cannot plant greatness as you plant yams or maize. Who ever planted an iroko tree — the greatest tree in the forest? You may collect all the iroko seeds in the world, open the soil and put them there. It will be in vain. The great tree chooses where to grow and we find it there, so it is with the greatness in men.

While we do our good works let us not forget that the real solution lies in a world in which charity will have become unnecessary.

There is that great proverb - that until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter. That did not come to me until much later. Once I realized that, I had to be a writer. I had to be that historian. It's not one man's job. It's not one person's job. But it is something we have to do, so that the story of the hunt will also reflect the agony, the travail - the bravery, even, of the lions.

Nobody can teach me who I am.

Charity . . . is the opium of the privileged.

People go to Africa and confirm what they already have in their heads and so they fail to see what is there in front of them. This is what people have come to expect. Its not viewed as a serious continent. Its a place of strange, bizarre and illogical things, where people dont do what common sense demands.

The only thing we have learnt from experience is that we learn nothing from experience.

A man to whom you do a favor will not understand if you say nothing, make no noise, just walk away. You may cause more trouble by refusing a bribe than by accepting it.

The impatient idealist says: 'Give me a place to stand and I shall move the earth.' But such a place does not exist. We all have to stand on the earth itself and go with her at her pace.

Whenever you see a toad jumping in broad daylight, then know that something is after its life.

If I hold her hand she says, ‘Don’t touch!’ If I hold her foot she says ‘Don’t touch!’ But when I hold her waist-beads she pretends not to know.

A debt may get mouldy, but it never decays.

It is the storyteller who makes us what we are, who creates history. The storyteller creates the memory that the survivors must have - otherwise their surviving would have no meaning.

Every lizard lies on its belly, so we cannot tell which has a belly-ache

We shall all live. We pray for life, children, a good harvest and happiness. You will have what is good for you and I will have what is good for me. Let the kite perch and let the egret perch too. If one says no to the other, let his wing break.

A disease that has never been seen before cannot be cured with every-day herbs.