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Chinua Achebe Quotes about Children

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No matter how prosperous a man was, if he was unable to rule his women and his children (and especially his women) he was not really a man.

No matter how prosperous a man was, if he was unable to rule his women and his children (and especially his women) he was not really a man.

Chinua Achebe
Children, Men, Okonkwo
Chinua Achebe (1996). “Things Fall Apart”, p.37, Heinemann

A child cannot pay for its mother’s milk.

Chinua Achebe
Mother, Children, Pay
Chinua Achebe (1996). “Things Fall Apart”, p.117, Heinemann

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.

Chinua Achebe
Children, Wings, Kites
Chinua Achebe (2009). “Things Fall Apart: Authoritative Text, Contexts and Criticism”, W W Norton & Company Incorporated

The world is large,” said Okonkwo. “I have even heard that in some tribes a man’s children belong to his wife and her family.” “That cannot be,” said Machi. “You might as well say that the woman lies on top of the man when they are making the babies.

Chinua Achebe
Baby, Children, Lying
Chinua Achebe (2009). “Things Fall Apart: Authoritative Text, Contexts and Criticism”, W W Norton & Company Incorporated

What I can say is that it was clear to many of us that an indigenous African literary renaissance was overdue. A major objective was to challenge stereotypes, myths, and the image of ourselves and our continent, and to recast them through stories- prose, poetry, essays, and books for our children. That was my overall goal.

Chinua Achebe
Children, Book, Prose Poetry
Chinua Achebe (2012). “There Was a Country: A Memoir”, p.44, Penguin

Age was respected among his people, but achievement was revered. As the elders said, if a child washed his hands he could eat with kings.

Chinua Achebe
Kings, Children, Hands
FaceBook post by Chinua Achebe from Jul 05, 2014

If a child washed his hands, he could eat with kings.

Chinua Achebe
Kings, Children, Hands
Chinua Achebe (1996). “Things Fall Apart”, p.6, Heinemann

Almost 30 years before Rwanda, before Darfur, more than 2 million people - mothers, children, babies, civilians - lost their lives as a result of the blatantly callous and unnecessary policies enacted by the leaders of the federal government of Nigeria. It's this charge that's dominated the book's Nigerian press, so far as I can see, the accusation, on the one hand, that Awolowo hatched "a diabolical policy to reduce the numbers of his enemies significantly through starvation - eliminating over two million people, mainly members of future generations.

Chinua Achebe
Mother, Baby, Children

Children are young, but they're not naive. And they're honest. They're not going to keep wide awake if the story is boring. When they get excited you can see it in their eyes.

Chinua Achebe
Children, Eye, Justice

Children are very fair minded, they really are.

Chinua Achebe
Children, Fairs
Source: www.ehlingmedia.com

"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."

Chinua Achebe
Mother, Children, Yams
"Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe, Fawcett Premier edition, (p. 64), 1969.

Americans, it seems to me, tend to protect their children from the harshness of life, in their interest. That's not the way my people rear their children. They let them experience the world as it is.

Chinua Achebe
Children, People, World

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.

Chinua Achebe
Teacher, Art, Children
Source: www.ehlingmedia.com

I'm sure if one turned one's mind back from grandiose faults to what is happening to the average man or woman or child in the rural areas, we will probably find that's where the energy for development is.

Chinua Achebe
Children, Men, Average
Source: www.ehlingmedia.com

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