Quote

We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own.

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
Devaluing
Trample
Humanity
Upon
Others
Cannot
Without

More quotes by Chinua Achebe

Image
I have so many ideas there are so many things that need to be done, so many possibilities, you know one is terribly excited, but at the same time, you're almost confused, because you don't know where to begin.
Chinua Achebe
Image
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.
Chinua Achebe
Image
Every lizard lies on its belly, so we cannot tell which has a belly-ache
Chinua Achebe
Image
A man who lived on the banks of the Niger should not wash his hands with spittle.
Chinua Achebe
Image
When a coward sees a man he can beat he becomes hungry for a fight.
Chinua Achebe
Image
It always surprised him when he thought of it later that he did not sink under the load of despair.
Chinua Achebe
Image
When suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool.
Chinua Achebe
Image
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
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
Those whose kernels were cracked by benevolent spirit should not forget to be humble.
Chinua Achebe
Image
Presidents do not go off on leave without telling the country.
Chinua Achebe
Image
I believe in the complexity of the human story, and that there's no way you can tell that story in one way and say, 'this is it.' Always there will be someone who can tell it differently depending on where they are standing ... this is the way I think the world's stories should be told: from many different perspectives.
Chinua Achebe
Image
Art should be on the side of humanity.
Chinua Achebe
Image
A toad does not run in the daytime for nothing
Chinua Achebe
Image
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
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
When Rimbaud became a slave trader, he stopped writing poetry.
Chinua Achebe
Image
I'm sure if one turned one's mind back from grandiose faults to what is happening to the average man or woman or child in the rural areas, we will probably find that's where the energy for development is.
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 last four or five hundred years of European contact with Africa produced a body of literature that presented Africa in a very bad light and Africans in very lurid terms. The reason for this had to do with the need to justify the slave trade and slavery.
Chinua Achebe