20 Powerful Quotes By Chinua Achebe

Chinụalụmọgụ Achebe was a Nigerian novelist, poet, professor, and critic. His first novel, Things Fall Apart (1958), is the most widely read book in modern African literature.

Achebe also authored several literary texts which include: No Longer at Ease ( 1960), Arrow of God (1964), A Man of the People ( 1966 ),  Anthills of the Savannah (1987), A Man of the People (1966) and There was a country (2012), among many others.

Chinua Achebe won international awards for his exploits in literature. The awards  include: St. Louis Literally Award (1999), Peace Prize of the German Book Trade prize (2002) International Booker Prize (2007),  and The Porothy & Lilian Gish Prize (2010).

He died in 2013 at the age of 82.

Here are some of his powerful quotes:

• The world has no end, and what is good among one people is an abomination with others.
• People create stories create people; or rather stories create people create stories.
• Privilege, you see, is one of the great adversaries of the imagination; it spreads a thick layer of adipose tissue over our sensitivity.
• If you don’t like someone’s story, write your own.
• The world is like a masquerade dancing. If you want to see it well, you do not stand in one place.
• 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.
• 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.
• Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.
• 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.
• If I hold her hand she says, ‘Don’t touch!’ If I hold her foot she says ‘Don’t touch!’ But when I hold her waist-beads she pretends not to know.

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

• Among the Igbo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten.
• 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.
• 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.
• What a country needs to do is be fair to all its citizens – whether people are of a different ethnicity or gender.
• 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 literature is really performing its wonders.
• 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.
• If you had been poor in your last life I would have asked you to be rich when you come again. But you were rich. If you had been a coward, I would have asked you to bring courage. But you were a fearless warrior. If you had died young, I would have asked you to get life. But you lived long. So I shall ask you to come again the way you came before.
• Kinsman in trouble had to be saved, not blamed ; anger against a brother was felt in the flesh , not in the bone.
• One of the truest tests of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised.
• My position is that the Nobel Prize is important. But it is a European prize. It’s not an African prize… Literature is not a heavyweight championship. Nigerians may think, you know , this man has been knocked out. It’s nothing to do with that

By Tobi Olusola