Chinua Achebe Quotes

164 quotes in 2114 categories

• One of the truest tests of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised.
• When suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought…
• When old people speak it is not because of the sweetness of words in our mouths; it is because we see something which you do…
• People say that if you find water rising up to your ankle, that's the time to do something about it, not when it's around your…
• I tell my students, it's not difficult to identify with somebody like yourself, somebody next door who looks like you. What's more difficult is to…
• A functioning, robust democracy requires a healthy educated, participatory followership, and an educated, morally grounded leadership.
• The only thing we have learnt from experience is that we learn nothing from experience.
• Oh, the most important thing about myself is that my life has been full of changes. Therefore, when I observe the world, I don't expect…
• What a country needs to do is be fair to all its citizens - whether people are of a different ethnicity or gender.
• Art is man's constant effort to create for himself a different order of reality from that which is given to him.
• The problem with leaderless uprisings taking over is that you don't always know what you get at the other end. If you are not careful…
• Democracy is not something you put away for ten years, and then in the 11th year you wake up and start practicing again. We have…
• The damage done in one year can sometimes take ten or twenty years to repair.
• In fact, I thought that Christianity was very a good and a very valuable thing for us. But after a while, I began to feel…
• I think back to the old people I knew when I was growing up, and they always seemed larger than life.
• But I liked Yeats! That wild Irishman. I really loved his love of language, his flow. His chaotic ideas seemed to me just the right…
• Once a novel gets going and I know it is viable, I don't then worry about plot or themes. These things will come in almost…
• When the British came to Ibo land, for instance, at the beginning of the 20th century, and defeated the men in pitched battles in different…
• The last four or five hundred years of European contact with Africa produced a body of literature that presented Africa in a very bad light…
• People create stories create people; or rather stories create people create stories.

Browse Chinua Achebe Quotes by Category