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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

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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.
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A good leader for instance is somebody like Nelson Mandela. I do not have seen such people coming every generation, maybe every ten generations, every hundred generations. People who are miracle workers.
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We do not seek to hurt any man, but if any man seeks to hurt us may he break his neck.
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Men have learned to shoot without missing their mark and I have learned to fly without perching on a twig.
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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.
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If you have leaders who are prepared to incite group against group it is very easy to manufacture reasons and excuses.
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The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership.
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When a man is at peace with his gods and ancestors, his harvest will be good or bad according to the strength of his arm.
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Nigeria has had a complicated colonial history. My work has examined that part of our story extensively.
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Become familiar with your home, but know also about your neighbors. The young man who never went anywhere thinks his mother is the greatest cook.
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A man to whom you do a favor will not understand if you say nothing, make no noise, just walk away. You may cause more trouble by refusing a bribe than by accepting it.
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I don't care about age very much.
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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.
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When Rimbaud became a slave trader, he stopped writing poetry.
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I feel that the English language will be able to carry the weight of my African experience. But it will have to be a new English, still in full communion with its ancestral home but altered to suit new African surroundings.
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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.
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If the clan did not exact punishment for an offense against the great goddess, her wrath was loosed on all the land and not just on the offender. As the elders said, if one finger brought oil it soiled all the others.
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A kinsman in trouble had to be saved, not blamed anger against a brother was felt in the flesh, not in the bone.
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While we do our good works let us not forget that the real solution lies in a world in which charity will have become unnecessary.
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When a new saying gets to the land of empty men, they lose their heads over it.
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