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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
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Chinua Achebe
Age: 82 †
Born: 1930
Born: November 16
Died: 2013
Died: March 22
Essayist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Philosopher
Poet
Short Story Writer
University Teacher
Writer
Albert Chinualumogu Achebe
Suffering
Knocks
Seat
Seats
Tells
Brought
Door
Doors
Stool
Worry
Stools
More quotes by Chinua Achebe
Africa is people may seem too simple and too obvious to some of us. But I have found in the course of my travels through the world that the most simple things can still givwe us a lot of trouble, even the brightest among us: this is particularly so in matters concerning Africa.
Chinua Achebe
They have not always elected the best leaders, particularly after a long period in which they have not used this facility of free election. You tend to lose the habit.
Chinua Achebe
After a war life catches desperately at passing hints of normalcy like vines entwining a hollow twig.
Chinua Achebe
The people you see in Nigeria today have always lived as neighbors in the same space for as long as we can remember. So it's a matter of settling down, lowering the rhetoric, the level of hostility in the rhetoric is too high.
Chinua Achebe
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
If a child washed his hands, he could eat with kings.
Chinua Achebe
If you ask me, Now, is it your best book? I would say, I don't really know. I wouldn't even want to say. And I'd even go on and say, I don't even think so.
Chinua Achebe
I think once you have done all you can to a manuscript, let it find its way in the world.
Chinua Achebe
A man who lived on the banks of the Niger should not wash his hands with spittle.
Chinua Achebe
My position is that serious and good art has always existed to help, to serve, humanity. Not to indict. I don’t see how art can be called art if its purpose is to frustrate humanity. To make humanity uncomfortable, yes. But intrinsically to be against humanity, that I don’t take.
Chinua Achebe
People go to Africa and confirm what they already have in their heads and so they fail to see what is there in front of them.
Chinua Achebe
Wisdom is like a goatskin bag every man carries his own.
Chinua Achebe
Children are young, but they're not naive. And they're honest. They're not going to keep wide awake if the story is boring. When they get excited you can see it in their eyes.
Chinua Achebe
Nigeria has had a complicated colonial history. My work has examined that part of our story extensively.
Chinua Achebe
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!
Chinua Achebe
Now one of the changes that must come to Africa is the idea of limited rule, I mean in term of how long one leader can stay in power. The era of president for life is not gone yet but it is on its way out and that is one of the problems with Mugabe and others.
Chinua Achebe
The last four or five hundred years of European contact with Africa produced a body of literature that presented Africa in a very bad light and Africans in very lurid terms. The reason for this had to do with the need to justify the slave trade and slavery.
Chinua Achebe
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
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
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
