Quote

Presidents do not go off on leave without telling the country.

Chinua Achebe

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Presidents
Telling
Leave
President
Without
Country

More quotes by Chinua Achebe

Image
It is difficult to express the reality of Ibo society in classical English.
Chinua Achebe
Image
In my definition I am a protest writer, with restraint.
Chinua Achebe
Image
Wisdom is like a goatskin bag every man carries his own.
Chinua Achebe
Image
And theories are no more than fictions which help us to make sense of experience and which are subject to disconfirmation when their explanations are no longer adequate.
Chinua Achebe
Image
Art should be on the side of humanity.
Chinua Achebe
Image
When we hear a house has fallen do we ask if the ceiling fell with it?
Chinua Achebe
Image
My parents were early converts to Christianity in my part of Nigeria. They were not just converts my father was an evangelist, a religious teacher. He and my mother traveled for thirty-five years to different parts of Igboland, spreading the gospel.
Chinua Achebe
Image
When there is a big tree small ones climb on its back to reach the sun.
Chinua Achebe
Image
A kinsman in trouble had to be saved, not blamed anger against a brother was felt in the flesh, not in the bone.
Chinua Achebe
Image
I don't like to see mistakes on the typewriter. I like a perfect script. On the typewriter I will sometimes leave a phrase that is not right, not what I want, simply because to change it would be a bit messy.
Chinua Achebe
Image
I do not actually see how art, literature can be anything other that being in that domain of trying to tell us, trying to get us to see what is important in our lives.
Chinua Achebe
Image
It is praiseworthy to be brave and fearless, but sometimes it is better to be a coward. We often stand in the compound of a coward to point at the ruins where a brave man used to live.
Chinua Achebe
Image
A coward may cover the ground with his words but when the time comes to fight he runs away.
Chinua Achebe
Image
Every lizard lies on its belly, so we cannot tell which has a belly-ache
Chinua Achebe
Image
An old woman is always uneasy when dry bones are mentioned in a proverb
Chinua Achebe
Image
A toad does not run in the daytime for nothing
Chinua Achebe
Image
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
Image
When a mad man walks naked, it is his kinsmen who feel shame, not himself.
Chinua Achebe
Image
Americans, it seems to me, tend to protect their children from the harshness of life, in their interest. That's not the way my people rear their children. They let them experience the world as it is.
Chinua Achebe
Image
...when we are comfortable and inattentive, we run the risk of committing grave injustices absentmindedly.
Chinua Achebe