Quote

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

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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
Often
Compounds
Used
Provoking
Better
Fearless
Live
Coward
Sometimes
Ruins
Men
Brave
Stand
Praiseworthy
Point
Compound

More quotes by Chinua Achebe

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Poetry and slave trading cannot be bedfellows. That's where I stand.
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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.
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Stories serve the purpose of consolidating whatever gains people or their leaders have made or imagine they have made in their existing journey thorough the world.
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You do not know me,’ said Tortoise. ‘I am a changed man. I have learned that a man who makes trouble for others makes trouble for himself.
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A functioning, robust democracy requires a healthy educated, participatory followership, and an educated, morally grounded leadership.
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In my definition I am a protest writer, with restraint.
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The language of young men is pull down and destroy but an old man speaks of conciliation.
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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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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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When I began going to school and learned to read, I encountered stories of other people and other lands.
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There must be areas in which a particular character does not represent you.
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When Rimbaud became a slave trader, he stopped writing poetry.
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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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A man's life from birth to death was a series of transition rites which brought him nearer and nearer to his ancestors.
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That we are surrounded by deep mysteries is known to all but the incurably ignorant.
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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
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The damage done in one year can sometimes take ten or twenty years to repair.
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But I liked Yeats! That wild Irishman. I really loved his love of language, his flow. His chaotic ideas seemed to me just the right thing for a poet. Passion! He was always on the right side. He may be wrongheaded, but his heart was always on the right side. He wrote beautiful poetry.
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No man however great is greater than his people
Chinua Achebe
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Art is man's constant effort to create for himself a different order of reality from that which is given to him.
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