Quote

...when we are comfortable and inattentive, we run the risk of committing grave injustices absentmindedly.

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
Comfortable
Risk
Running
Inattentive
Injustices
Committing
Grave
Graves
Injustice

More quotes by Chinua Achebe

Image
The most awful thing about power is not that it corrupts absolutely but that it makes people so utterly boring, so predictable.
Chinua Achebe
Image
Diversity is not an abnormality but the very reality of our planet. The human world manifests the same reality and will not seek our permission to celebrate itself in the magnificence of its endless varieties. Civility is a sensible attribute in this kind of world we have narrowness of heart and mind is not.
Chinua Achebe
Image
A man who makes trouble for others is also making trouble for himself.
Chinua Achebe
Image
Literature, whether handed down by word or mouth or in print, gives us a second handle on reality.
Chinua Achebe
Image
In such a regime, I say, you died a good death if your life had inspired someone to come forward and shoot your murderer in the chest-without asking to be paid.
Chinua Achebe
Image
Poetry and slave trading cannot be bedfellows. That's where I stand.
Chinua Achebe
Image
What is modesty but inverted pride?
Chinua Achebe
Image
A man's life from birth to death was a series of transition rites which brought him nearer and nearer to his ancestors.
Chinua Achebe
Image
Those whose kernels were cracked by benevolent spirit should not forget to be humble.
Chinua Achebe
Image
Mosquito [...] had asked Ear to marry him, whereupon Ear fell on the floor in uncontrollable laughter. How much longer do you think you will live? she asked. You are already a skeleton. Mosquito went away humiliated, and any time he passed her way he told Ear that he was still alive.
Chinua Achebe
Image
It is as though the ancestors who made language and knew from what bestiality its use rescued them are saying to us: Beware of interfering with its purpose! For when language is seriously interfered with, when it is disjoined from truth, be it from mere incompetence or worse, from malice, horrors can descend again on mankind.
Chinua Achebe
Image
Do not be in a hurry to rush into the pleasures of the world like the young antelope who danced herself lame when the main dance was yet to come.
Chinua Achebe
Image
Whenever I try to do anything on a typewriter, it's like having this machine between me and the words what comes out is not quite what would come out if I were scribbling.
Chinua Achebe
Image
Wisdom is like a goatskin bag every man carries his own.
Chinua Achebe
Image
I don't praise my people. I am their greatest critic.
Chinua Achebe
Image
One reason why I am quite angry with what is happening in Nigeria today is that everything has collapsed. If I decide to go back now, there will be so many problems - where will I find the physical therapy and other things that I now require?
Chinua Achebe
Image
You might as well say that the woman lies on top of the man when they are making the babies.
Chinua Achebe
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I'm a practised writer now. But when I began, I had no idea what this was going to be. I just knew that there was something inside me that wanted me to tell who I was, and that would have come out even if I didn't want it.
Chinua Achebe