Chinua Achebe Quotes (21 Quotes)


    At the most one could say that his chi or ... personal god was good. But the Ibo people have a proverb that when a man says yes his chi says yes also. Okonkwo said yes very strongly; so his chi agreed.

    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.

    Mr. Brown had thought of nothing but numbers. He should have known that the kingdom of God did not depend on large crowds. Our Lord Himself stressed the importance of fewness. Narrow is the way and few the number. To fill the Lord's holy temple with an idolatrous crowd clamoring for signs was a folly of everlasting consequence. Our Lord used the whip only once in His life - to drive the crowd away from His church.

    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.



    The whole idea of a stereotype is to simplify. Instead of going through the problem of all this great diversity - that it's this or maybe that - you have just one large statement; it is this.

    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. It's not viewed as a serious continent. It's a place of strange, bizarre and illogical things, where people don't do what common sense demands.

    Stories serve the purpose of consolidating whatever gains people or their leaders have made or imagine they have made in their existing journey thorough the world.

    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.

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

    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.

    What's important is that we recognize the falsehood of the notion that the Third World should be abandoned because it's a waste of time.

    In such a regime, I say, you died a good death if your life had inspired someone to come forward and shoot your murderer in the chestwithout asking to be paid.

    One of the truest tests of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised.

    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.

    People create stories create people; or rather stories create people create stories.

    A man who makes trouble for others is also making trouble for himself.

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

    They have not always elected the best leaders, particularly after a long period in which they have not used this facility of free election. You tend to lose the habit.

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

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


    More Chinua Achebe Quotations (Based on Topics)


    Leadership - God - People - Leading & Managing - World - Pride - Mind - Time - Democracy - Sign & Symbol - Purposes - Art - Habit - Experience - Stupidity - Brothers - Reality - Place - Man - View All Chinua Achebe Quotations

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    - Things Fall Apart

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