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A chief does not hurry.

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
Chief
Chiefs
Doe
Hurry

More quotes by Chinua Achebe

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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.
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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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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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There must be areas in which a particular character does not represent you.
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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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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
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[Would] a sensible man spit out the juicy morsel that good fortune put in his mouth?
Chinua Achebe
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It has always been quite apparent to me that no important story can fail to tell us something of value to us.
Chinua Achebe
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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.
Chinua Achebe
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A man of worth never gets up to unsay what he said yesterday.
Chinua Achebe
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This is why I find racism impossible, because this is against humanity.
Chinua Achebe
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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
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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.
Chinua Achebe
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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.
Chinua Achebe
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My weapon is literature
Chinua Achebe
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In such a regime, I say, you died a good death if your life had inspired someone to come forward and shoot your murderer in the chest-without asking to be paid.
Chinua Achebe
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Dancing is very important nowadays. No girl will look at you if you can't dance.
Chinua Achebe
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I prefer to go on trying all kinds of things, not to be told, This is the way it is done.
Chinua Achebe
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When we hear a house has fallen do we ask if the ceiling fell with it?
Chinua Achebe
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We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own.
Chinua Achebe