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A man who lived on the banks of the Niger should not wash his hands with spittle.
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
Spittle
Niger
Wash
Banks
Lived
Hands
Men
More quotes by Chinua Achebe
Anybody who wants to rule a group will find that if this group is quarreling among themselves they leave you alone.
Chinua Achebe
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.
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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.
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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
An old woman is always uneasy when dry bones are mentioned in a proverb
Chinua Achebe
Those whose kernels were cracked by benevolent spirit should not forget to be humble.
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
Do you blame a vulture for perching over a carcass?
Chinua Achebe
Only the story can continue beyond the war and the warrior. The story outlives the sound of the war drum... The story is our escort. Without it we are blind... It is the thing that sets us apart from cattle.
Chinua Achebe
I tell my students, it's not difficult to identify with somebody like yourself, somebody next door who looks like you. What's more difficult is to identify with someone you don't see, who's very far away, who's a different color, who eats a different kind of food. When you begin to do that then literature is really performing its wonders.
Chinua Achebe
I couldn't tell you why but now I know a story is in fact where you discover who you are, where a culture discovers what it is and I just think that this is a terribly important place to get into and that I would enjoy it.
Chinua Achebe
My weapon is literature
Chinua Achebe
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
Poetry and slave trading cannot be bedfellows. That's where I stand.
Chinua Achebe
I don't praise my people. I am their greatest critic.
Chinua Achebe
If you're rooted to a spot, you miss a lot of the grace. So you keep moving, and this is the way I think the world's stories should be told - from many different perspectives.
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
He is a fool who treats his brother worse than a stranger.
Chinua Achebe
Nigeria has had a complicated colonial history. My work has examined that part of our story extensively.
Chinua Achebe
There's no lack of writers writing novels in America, about America. Therefore, it seems to me it would be wasteful for me to add to that huge number of people writing here when there are so few people writing about somewhere else.
Chinua Achebe
