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Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
74 quotes
“Universities today, particularly in Africa, have become the modern patrons for the artist. Most African-writers are products of universities: indeed a good number of them still combine academic posts and writing. Also, a writer and a surgeon have something in common—a passion for truth. Prescription of the correct cure is dependent on a rigorous analysis of reality. Writers are surgeons of the heart and souls of a community.”
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (1938–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“(Preface , Page Ix)”
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (1938–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“(Preface , Page Xii)”
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (1938–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“(Introduction , Page 2)”
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (1938–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The condition of women in a nation is the real measure of its progress.”
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (1938–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Stories, like food, lose their flavor if cooked in a hurry.”
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (1938–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Your own actions are a better mirror of your life than the actions of all your enemies put together.”
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (1938–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I believe that black has been oppressed by white; female by male; peasant by landlord; and worker by lord of capital. It follows from this that the black female worker and peasant is the most oppressed. She is oppressed on account of her color like all black people in the world; she is oppressed on account of her gender like all women in the world; and she is exploited and oppressed on account of her class like all workers and peasants in the world. Three burdens she has to carry.”
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (1938–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“for I had reached a point in my life when I came to view words differently. A closer look at language could reveal the secret of life.”
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (1938–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That was one of the most rewarding things about spending nights in the open. Birds were bound to wake you up, and whether they carried good or bad luck, at least they woke you up with music.”
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (1938–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It's terrible when the old have to bury the young. But it is more terrible when neither the old nor the young are there to bury each other.”
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (1938–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am human, i am a human being, a soul, and not a piece of garbage, no matter how poor and ragged I look, and I deserve respect, he heard himself say, time and again as he descended to and repossessed his body.”
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (1938–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Then change the world. Give it a soul.”
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (1938–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Written words can also sing.”
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (1938–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Belief in yourself is more important than endless worries of what others think of you. Value yourself and others will value you. Validation is best that comes from within.”
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (1938–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He was caught red-handed,’ some were saying. ‘Imagine, bullets in his hands. In broad daylight.’ Everybody, even we children, knew that for an African to be caught with bullets or empty shells was treason; he would be dubbed a terrorist, and his hanging by the rope was the only outcome. ‘We could hear gunfire,’ some were saying. ‘I saw them shoot at him with my own eyes.’ ‘But he didn’t die!’ ‘Die? Hmm! Bullets flew at those who were shooting.’ ‘No, he flew into the sky and disappeared into the clouds.’”
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (1938–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But, somehow, in time, I began to connect a few threads, and things became clearer as if I was emerging from a mist. I learned that our land was not quite our land; that our compound was part of a property owned by an African landlord, Lord Reverend Stanley Kahahu, or Bwana Stanley, as we called him; that we were now the ahoi, tenants at will. How did we come to be ahoi on our own land? Had we lost our traditional land to Europeans? The mist had not cleared entirely.”
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (1938–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“of course, translations always lose something. But I think what is gained is much more than what is lost. In a sense, I could not wait to learn French, and Russian, and German for me to be acquainted with Balzac, to be acquainted with Tolstoy, with Brecht, and with other people who are important to me. (in Interviews with writers of the post-colonial world, 1992)”
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (1938–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“the vast majority of African people speak different languages today. And therefore the starting point for any writer is that reality, the language spoken by the people. If I am writing for this audience, I have to use the language they use. I persuade them into my vision of Kenya, Africa and the world in the only language that they can understand. We must not forget that many languages in the world communicate through translations. (Interviews with writers of the post-colonial world, 1992)”
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (1938–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The novelist is haunted by a sense of the past. His work is often an attempt to come to terms with 'the thing that has been', a struggle, as it were, to sensitively register his encounter with history, his people's history. And the novelist, at his best, must feel himself heir to a continuous tradition. He must feel himself, as I think Tolstoy did in War and Peace or Sholokov in And Quiet Flows the Don, swimming, struggling, defining himself, in the mainstream of his people's historical drama. At the same time, he must be able to stand aside and merely contemplate the currents. He must do both: simultaneously swim, struggle and also watch, on the shore.”
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (1938–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As a worker, I know very well that the forces of law and order are on the side of those who rob the workers of the products of their sweat, of those who steal food and land from the peasants. The peace and the order and the stability they defend with armored cars is the peace and the order and the stability of the rich, who feast on bread and wine snatched from the mouths of the poor—yes, they protect the eaters from the wrath of the thirsty and the hungry. Have you ever seen employers being attacked by the armed forces for refusing to increase the salaries of their workers? What about when the workers go on strike? And they have the audacity to talk about violence!”
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (1938–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Why, we may ask, should an African writer, or any writer, become so obsessed by taking from his mother-tongue to enrich other tongues? Why should he see it as his particular mission? We never asked ourselves: how can we enrich our languages? How can we 'prey' on the rich humanist and democratic heritage in the struggles of other peoples in other times and other places to enrich our own? Why not have Balzac, Tolstoy, Sholokov, Brecht, Lu Hsun, Pablo Neruda, H.C. Anderson, Kim Chi Ha, Marx, Lenin, Albert Einstein, Galileo, Aeschylus, Aristotle and Plato in African languages? And why not create literary monuments in our own languages?...No these questions were not asked. What seemed to worry us more was this: after all the literary gymnastics of preying on our languages to add life and vigour to English and other foreign languages, would the result be accepted as good English or good French? Will the owner of the language criticise our usage?”
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (1938–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If in these essays I criticise the Afro-European (or Euroafrican) choice of our linguistic praxis, it is not to take away from the talent and the genius of those who have written in English, French or Portuguese. On the contrary I am lamenting a neo-colonial situation which has meant the European bourgeoisie once again stealing our talents and geniuses as they have stolen our economies. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Europe stole art treasures from Africa to decorate their houses and museums; in the twentieth century Europe is stealing the treasures of the mind to enrich their languages and cultures. Africa needs back its economy, its politics, its culture, its languages and all its patriotic writers.”
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (1938–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I shall look at the African realities as they are affected by the great struggle between the two mutually opposed forces in Africa today: an imperialist tradition on one hand, and a resistance tradition on the other. The imperialist tradition in Africa is today maintained by the international bourgeoisie using the multinational and of course the flag-waving native ruling classes. [...]The resistance tradition is being carried out by the working people (the peasantry and the proletariat) aided by patriotic students, intellectuals (academic and non-academic), soldiers and other progressive elements of the petty middle class.”
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (1938–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source