Chinua Achebe Speaks"

“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.”
― Chinua Achebe, Anthills of the Savannah

“If you don't like someone's story, write your own.”
― Chinua Achebe

“Nobody can teach me who I am. You can describe parts of me, but who I am - and what I need - is something I have to find out myself.”
― Chinua Achebe

“The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.”
― Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart

“To me, being an intellectual doesn't mean knowing about intellectual issues; it means taking pleasure in them.”
― Chinua Achebe

“We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own. The Igbo, always practical, put it concretely in their proverb Onye ji onye n'ani ji onwe ya: "He who will hold another down in the mud must stay in the mud to keep him down.”
― Chinua Achebe, The Education of a British-Protected Child: Essays

“Charity . . . is the opium of the privileged.”
― Chinua Achebe, Anthills of the Savannah

“My weapon is literature”
― Chinua Achebe

“One of the truest tests of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised. ”
― Chinua Achebe

“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 his own stool.”
― Chinua Achebe

“Nobody can teach me who I am.”
― Chinua Achebe

“People create stories create people; or rather stories create people create stories.”
― Chinua Achebe

“There is no story that is not true.”
― Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart

“...when we are comfortable and inattentive, we run the risk of committing grave injustices absentmindedly.”
― Chinua Achebe, The Education of a British-Protected Child: Essays

“A man who calls his kinsmen to a feast does not do so to save them from starving. They all have food in their own homes. When we gather together in the moonlit village ground it is not because of the moon. Every man can see it in his own compound. We come together because it is good for kinsmen to do so.”
― Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart

“Then listen to me,' he said and cleared his throat. 'It's true that a child belongs to its father. But when a father beats his child, it seeks sympathy in its mother's hut. A man belongs to his fatherland when things are good and life is sweet. But when there is sorrow and bitterness he finds refuge in his motherland. Your mother is there to protect you. She is buried there. And that is why we say that mother is supreme. Is it right that you, Okonkwo, should bring your mother a heavy face and refuse to be comforted? Be careful or you may displease the dead. Your duty is to comfort your wives and children and take them back to your fatherland after seven years. But if you allow sorrow to weigh you down and kill you, they will all die in exile.”
― Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart

“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 to see it just like I was seeing the fellow who lives in the next room. There is this complexity which seems to me to be part of the meaning of existence and everything we value.”
― Chinua Achebe

“Writers don't give prescriptions. They give headaches!”
― Chinua Achebe, Anthills of the Savannah

“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, Things Fall Apart

“Privilege, you see, is one of the great adversaries of the imagination; it spreads a thick layer of adipose tissue over our sensitivity.”
― Chinua Achebe, Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays

“When the moon is shining the cripple becomes hungry for a walk”
― Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart

“When Suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat left for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool.”
― Chinua Achebe

“Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness.It was deeper and more intimate that the fear of evil and capricious gods and of magic, the fear of the forest, and of the forces of nature, malevolent, red in tooth and claw. Okonkwo’s fear was greater than these. It was not external but lay deep within himself.”
― Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart

“Do not despair. I know you will not despair. You have a manly and a proud heart. A proud heart can survive a general failure because such a failure does not prick its pride. It is more difficult and more bitter when a man fails alone.”
― Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart

“Among the Igbo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten.”
― Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart

“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.”
― Chinua Achebe, No Longer at Ease

“Women and music should not be dated.”
― Chinua Achebe, No Longer at Ease

“A man who pays respect to the great paves the way for his own greatness”
― Chinua Achebe

“Writing has always been a serious business for me. I felt it was a moral obligation. A major concern of the time was the absence of the African voice. Being part of that dialogue meant not only sitting at the table but effectively telling the African story from an African perspective - in full earshot of the world.”
― Chinua Achebe, There Was A Country: A Personal History of Biafra

“The triumph of the written word is often attained when the writer achieves union and trust with the reader, who then becomes ready to be drawn into unfamiliar territory, walking in borrowed literary shoes so to speak, toward a deeper understanding of self or society, or of foreign peoples, cultures, and situations.”
― Chinua Achebe, There Was A Country: A Personal History of Biafra 

 

“...Nothing puzzles God”
― Chinua Achebe, Civil Peace

“People from different parts of the world can respond to the same story if it says something to them about their own history and their own experience.”
― Chinua Achebe, There Was A Country: A Personal History of Biafra

“Africa is people" may seem too simple and too obvious to some of us. But I have found in the course of my travels through the world that the most simple things can still give us a lot of trouble, even the brightest among us: this is particularly so in matters concerning Africa.”
― Chinua Achebe, The Education of a British-Protected Child: Essays

“Every generation must recognize and embrace the task it is peculiarly designed by history and by providence to perform.”
― Chinua Achebe, There Was A Country: A Personal History of Biafra 

 

“Those whose kernels were cracked by benevolent spirit should not forget to be humble.”
― Chinua Achebe

“In my definition I am a protest writer, with restraint.”
― Chinua Achebe, There Was A Country: A Personal History of Biafra

“A toad does not run in the daytime for nothing”
― Chinua Achebe

“Procrastination is a lazy man's apology.”
― Chinua Achebe, Anthills of the Savannah

“There is a moral obligation, I think, not to ally oneself with power against the powerless.”
― Chinua Achebe, There Was A Country: A Personal History of Biafra

“A man who makes trouble for others is also making trouble for himself.
-Chinua Achebe

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

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 not see.
-Chinua Achebe

The damage done in one year can sometimes take ten or twenty years to repair.
-Chinua Achebe

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

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 you could replace a bad government with one much worse!
-Chinua Achebe

Nigera is what it is because its leaders are not what they should be.
-Chinua Achebe

Art is man's constant effort to create for himself a different order of reality from that which is given to him.
Chinua Achebe

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 to begin to learn to rule ourselves again.
Chinua Achebe

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 automatically because the characters are now pulling the story.
Chinua Achebe

What a country needs to do is be fair to all its citizens - whether people are of a different ethnicity or gender.
Chinua Achebe

I think back to the old people I knew when I was growing up, and they always seemed larger than life.
Chinua Achebe

I've had trouble now and again in Nigeria because I have spoken up about the mistreatment of factions in the country because of difference in religion. These are things we should put behind us.
Chinua Achebe

My parents were early converts to Christianity in my part of Nigeria. They were not just converts; my father was an evangelist, a religious teacher. He and my mother traveled for thirty-five years to different parts of Igboland, spreading the gospel.
Chinua Achebe