Craigon Lennon > Craigon's Quotes

“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

“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

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

“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

“There is no story that is not true, [...] The world has no end, and what is good among one people is an abomination with others.”
― Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart

“My weapon is literature
”
― 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

“Storytellers are a threat. They threaten all champions of control, they frighten usurpers of the right-to-freedom of the human spirit -- in state, in church or mosque, in party congress, in the university or wherever.”
― Chinua Achebe, Anthills of the Savannah

“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.”
― 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

“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

“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 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

“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

“It is only the story...that saves our progeny from blundering like blind beggars into the spikes of the cactus fence.The story is our escort;without it,we are blind.Does the blind man own his escort?No,neither do we the story;rather,it is the story that owns us.
”
― 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

“Some people flinch when you talk about art in the context of the needs of society thinking you are introducing something far too common for a discussion of art. Why should art have a purpose and a use? Art shouldn't be concerned with purpose and reason and need, they say. These are improper. But from the very beginning, it seems to me, stories have indeed been meant to be enjoyed, to appeal to that part of us which enjoys good form and good shape and good sound.”
― Chinua Achebe, There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra

“Unfortunately, oppression does not automatically produce only meaningful struggle. It has the ability to call into being a wide range of responses between partial acceptance and violent rebellion. In between you can have, for instance, a vague, unfocused dissatisfaction; or, worst of all, savage infighting among the oppressed, a fierce love-hate entanglement with one another like crabs inside the fisherman's bucket, which ensures that no crab gets away. This is a serious issue for African-American deliberation.

To answer oppression with appropriate resistance requires knowledge of two kinds: in the first place, self-knowledge by the victim, which means awareness that oppression exists, an awareness that the victim has fallen from a great height of glory or promise into the present depths; secondly, the victim must know who the enemy is. He must know his oppressor's real name, not an alias, a pseudonym, or a nom de plume!”
― Chinua Achebe, The Education of a British-Protected Child: Essays

“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

“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

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

“The price a world language must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of use. The African writer should aim to use English in a way that brings out his message best without altering the language to the extent that its value as a medium of international exchange will be lost. He should aim at fashioning out an English which is at once universal and able to carry his peculiar experience.”
― Chinua Achebe, Morning Yet on Creation Day: Essays

“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

“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

“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

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

“That we are surrounded by deep mysteries is known to all but the incurably ignorant.”
― Chinua Achebe