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People go to Africa and confirm what they already have in their heads and so they fail to see what is there in front of them.

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
Fronts
Front
Failing
Already
People
Confirm
Heads
Africa
Fail

More quotes by Chinua Achebe

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Almost nobody dances sober, unless they happen to be insane. H. P. LOVECRAFT, attributed, Telling It Like It Is Dancing is very important nowadays. No girl will look at you if you can't dance.
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When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground.
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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.
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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 chief does not hurry.
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This is not pessimism but rather casting a cold eye on things. It is only one man's story, and I think that things will go better, but difficulties exist and nothing is served by hiding them under a poetic veil or under a lyricism of the past. I am against slogans.
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Wisdom is like a goatskin bag every man carries his own.
Chinua Achebe
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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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Unless I'm writing in the Igbo language, I use a language developed elsewhere, which is English. That affects the way I write. It even affects to some extent the stories I write.
Chinua Achebe
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A pen on paper is the ideal way for me. I am not really very comfortable with machines I never learned to type very well.
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A functioning, robust democracy requires a healthy educated, participatory followership, and an educated, morally grounded leadership.
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...Nothing puzzles God
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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
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They have not always elected the best leaders, particularly after a long period in which they have not used this facility of free election. You tend to lose the habit.
Chinua Achebe
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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
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Joseph Conrad was a thoroughgoing racist. That this simple truth is glossed over in criticisms of his work is due to the fact that white racism against Africa is such a normal way of thinking that its manifestations go completely unremarked.
Chinua Achebe
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A man who makes trouble for others is also making trouble for himself.
Chinua Achebe
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Poetry and slave trading cannot be bedfellows. That's where I stand.
Chinua Achebe
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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.
Chinua Achebe