Chinua Achebe Quotes

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.

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 that the story that I was told about this religion wasn't perhaps completely whole, that something was left out.

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.

I was a supporter of the desire, in my section of Nigeria, to leave the federation because it was treated very badly with something that was called genocide in those days.

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

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 identify with someone you don't see, who's very far away, who's a different color, who eats a different kind of food. When you begin to do that then lite

I don't care about age very much.

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 thing for a poet. Passion! He was always on the right side. He may be wrongheaded, but his heart was always on the right side. He wrote beautiful poetry.

An artist, in my understanding of the word, should side with the people against the Emperor that oppresses his or her people.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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!

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 neck.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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