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Wole Soyinka
133 quotes
“I said: "A tiger does not proclaim his tigritude, he pounces". In other words: a tiger does not stand in the forest and say: "I am a tiger". When you pass where the tiger has walked before, you see the skeleton of the duiker, you know that some tigritude has been emanated there.”
Wole Soyinka (born 1934) first seen 1968 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Janheinz Jahn (trans. Oliver Coburn and Ursula Lehrburger) A History of Neo-African Literature (London: Faber, 1968) pp. 265-6.
“The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny.”
Wole Soyinka (born 1934) first seen 1972 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Man Died (New York: Harper & Row, 1972) p. 13.
“There is only one home to the life of a river-mussel; there is only one home to the life of a tortoise; there is only one shell to the soul of man: there is only one world to the spirit of our race. If that world leaves its course and smashes on boulders of the great void, whose world will give us shelter?”
Wole Soyinka (born 1934) first seen 1975 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Death and the King's Horseman (1975); cited from Six Plays (London: Methuen, 1984) p. 189.
“[T]he PDP, on whose platform he stands, represents the most harrowing of this nation’s nightmares over and beyond even the horrors of the Abacha regime. If he wishes to be considered on his own merit, now is time for him, as well as others similarly enmeshed, to exercise the moral courage that goes with his repudiation of that party, a dissociation from its past, and a pledge to reverse its menacing future. We shall find him an alternative platform on which to stand, and then have him present his credentials along those of other candidates engaged in forging a credible opposition alliance.”
Wole Soyinka (born 1934) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Come January 20, 2017; watch my WOLEXIT" [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/nobel-prize-winner-wole-soyinka-donald-trump-throws-away-green-card-a7450141.html”
Wole Soyinka (born 1934) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism.”
Wole Soyinka (born 1934) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“the contemporary novel . . . I've read one or two: Rushdie, I've enjoyed, again, exceptionally, Marquez, I love his works: that's another exception. Bessie Head: I found her novels very, very gripping, fascinating, challenging, really intellectually intriguing. Then that black American woman writer, Toni Morrison, the author of Sula, Song of Solomon: she's a fascinating writer. Umberto Eco . . . But generally I don't read novels.”
Wole Soyinka (born 1934) first seen 1992 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: in Talking with African Writers by Jane Wilkinson (1992)
“Well, some people say I'm pessimistic because I recognize the eternal cycle of evil. All I say is, look at the history of mankind right up to this moment and what do you find?”
Wole Soyinka (born 1934) first seen 2001 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Wole Soyinka, Biodun Jeyifo (2001). “Conversations with Wole Soyinka”, p.159, Univ. Press of Mississippi
“See, even despite pious statements to the contrary, much of the industrialized world has not yet come to terms with the recognition of the fallacy of what I call the strong man syndrome.”
Wole Soyinka (born 1934) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As a global citizen, I sometimes feel like denying my identity.”
Wole Soyinka (born 1934) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I consider the process of gestation just as important as when you're actually sitting down putting words to the paper.”
Wole Soyinka (born 1934) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Alfred Nobel regretted that his invention, dynamite, was converted to degrading use, hence his creation of the Nobel Prize, as the humanist counter to the destructive power of his genius.”
Wole Soyinka (born 1934) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I know there are writers who get up every morning and sit by their typewriter or word processor or pad of paper and wait to write. I don't function that way. I go through a long period of gestation before I'm even ready to write.”
Wole Soyinka (born 1934) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I can look violence in the face and either reject or accept it.”
Wole Soyinka (born 1934) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“With theatre, you can interpret the most complex play on stage for it have meaning to an audience because you're dealing in images, you're dealing in action, you can use different idioms to interpret and clarify something which is obscured in the reading and of course there are different kinds of play, there are mythological plays, there are what I call the dramatic sketches, direct political theatre which is virtually everybody, but I find that you can use the stage as a social vehicle, you know, which any kind of audience.”
Wole Soyinka (born 1934) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I grew up with a very strong sense of what is just and what is not …”
Wole Soyinka (born 1934) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But when you're deprived of it for a lengthy period then you value human companionship. But you have to survive and so you devise all kinds of mental exercises and it's amazing.”
Wole Soyinka (born 1934) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As a president, you've got to show some example. I am disturbed for instance when I read that a candidate said, 'I will not probe anybody or something like that'. You don't fight corruption by sweeping everything under the carpet, you don't. You just say, am going to allow the law take its course; I am going to empower the agencies which has been set up for such specific purpose of stemming the corrupt out flow of resources from this nation and don't even talk to me about corruption beyond saying you going to strengthen existing institutions.”
Wole Soyinka (born 1934) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Well, I think the Yoruba gods are truthful. Truthful in the sense that i consider religion and the construct of deities simply an extension of human qualities taken, if you like, to the nth degree. i mistrust gods who become so separated from humanity that enormous crimes can be committed in their names. i prefer gods who can be brought down to earth and judged, if you like.”
Wole Soyinka (born 1934) first seen 2001 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Conversations with Wole Soyinka (2001)
“We wasted a lot of creative energy in that immediate post colonial era, when there was a struggle between, you know, the Cold War between the capitalism and communism. Many writers just wasted their energy and their talent because they want to be ideologically correct and of course all they produced was propaganda.”
Wole Soyinka (born 1934) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Nobel Prize in Literature 1986
“I never hesitated, as a student, in embracing the necessity of violence. In South Africa, I didn't just accept it; I looked forward to it as a mission.”
Wole Soyinka (born 1934) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Of course I've enjoyed having the Nobel Prize, the prestige that goes along with it, the money that came with it in particular. I was the typical, still am to some extent, impecunious writer, just struggling to make ends meet, so that, nobody's going to deny that at all. In fact, if they want to give it to me a second time, I'm standing by, ready to receive it, but it's a problem, it's a real problem and then expectations and then you have monsters like Sani Abacha who come up from time to time and who would have died a happy man if he'd succeeded in hanging a Nobel Laureate for literature.”
Wole Soyinka (born 1934) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Nobel Prize in Literature 1986
“The media must be used effectively to reach the masses. You have to find a new language in which to address the people and demonstrate what is possible.”
Wole Soyinka (born 1934) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My interest in culture generally is a comparative one, and I think that's where the word joy, I think, can be applicable. There's joy in actually seeing the relatedness, the connectedness of different cultures or recognising, for instance, your own culture in another or another culture in your own culture and feeling an air to all of them.”
Wole Soyinka (born 1934) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Nobel Prize in Literature 1986
“My understanding of the creative process is simply that all cultures and all concerns meet at a certain point, the human point in which everything is related to one another. That has been my creative experience.”
Wole Soyinka (born 1934) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Nobel Prize in Literature 1986
“I believe that each writer must decide in which language he or she is most comfortable.”
Wole Soyinka (born 1934) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I think the epicentre of terrorism whether you call it cesspit or whatever you want to call it, shift, if you asked me a while ago, I would have said Somalia, Somalia has quietened a bit – and I think the epicentre right now is in Northern Nigeria.”
Wole Soyinka (born 1934) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Intolerance has always been with us, you know. The moment you have ideology, we have intolerance, whether it's the secular ideology or, you know ideocratic ideology, which always brings with it some kind of intolerance.”
Wole Soyinka (born 1934) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Nobel Prize in Literature 1986
“I made my own ink with dirt; I made my own pen from the bones in the meat of my food, creating a complete self-sustaining mental micro-world of my own”
Wole Soyinka (born 1934) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I go through a long period of gestation before I'm even ready to write.”
Wole Soyinka (born 1934) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sidi feels empowered by seeing her beauty for the first time in the magazine prints. She recognizes that her beauty is a commodity, allowing her agency to make a future for herself. This is a novel idea: choosing one's own future is reserved for men.”
Wole Soyinka (born 1934) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is five full months since last / I took a wife”
Wole Soyinka (born 1934) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The greedy dog! Insatiate camel of a foolish, doting race.”
Wole Soyinka (born 1934) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How often must I tell you, Sidi, that / A grown-up girl must cover up her... / Her... shoulders? I can see quite... quite / A good portion of—that!”
Wole Soyinka (born 1934) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What I boast is known in Lagos, that city / Of magic, in Badagry where Saro women bathe / In gold, even in smaller towns less than / Twelve miles from here...”
Wole Soyinka (born 1934) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Bush-girl you are, bush girl you'll always be; / Uncivilized and primitive—bush-girl!”
Wole Soyinka (born 1934) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My Ruth, my Rachel, Esther, Bathsheba / Thou sum of fabled perfections / From Genesis to Revelations”
Wole Soyinka (born 1934) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sadiku, I am young and brimming; he is spent. / I am the twinkle of a jewel / But he is the hind-quarters of a lion!”
Wole Soyinka (born 1934) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No! I do not envy him! / Just one woman for me!”
Wole Soyinka (born 1934) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To husband his wives surely ought to be / A man's first duties—at all times.”
Wole Soyinka (born 1934) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I do not hate progress, only its nature / Which makes all roofs and faces look the same.”
Wole Soyinka (born 1934) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Moreover, I will admit, / It solves the problem of her bride-price too. / A man must live or fall by his true / Principles. That, I had sworn, / Never to pay.”
Wole Soyinka (born 1934) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Lakunle, last seen, having freed himself of Sadiku, clearing a space for the young girl.”
Wole Soyinka (born 1934) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Romance is the sweetening of the soul With fragrance offered by the stricken heart.”
Wole Soyinka (born 1934) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The accumulated heritage—that is what we are celebrating. Mali. Chaka. Songhai. Glory. Empires.”
Wole Soyinka (born 1934) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I see we’ve got another of the good old days. Obaneji [on the contrary].”
Wole Soyinka (born 1934) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Will you take my case?”
Wole Soyinka (born 1934) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When you see a man hurrying, he has got a load on his back. Do you think I live emptily that I will take another's cause for pay or mercy?”
Wole Soyinka (born 1934) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The world is big, but the dead are bigger”
Wole Soyinka (born 1934) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This whole family business sickens me. Let everybody lead their own lives,”
Wole Soyinka (born 1934) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source