Quote

Only the story can continue beyond the war and the warrior. The story outlives the sound of the war drum... The story is our escort. Without it we are blind... It is the thing that sets us apart from cattle.

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
Story
Drum
Sound
Cattle
War
Sets
Stories
Warrior
Without
Apart
Thing
Blind
Continue
Outlives
Beyond
Escort

More quotes by Chinua Achebe

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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.
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The sun will shine on those who stand before it shines on those who kneel under them.
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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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I'm amazed when I think about students today. They know from day one what they are going to be. We didn't. We just coasted. We just knew that things would work out.
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What you must accept is that your life is not going to be the same while you are writing.
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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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
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It is as though the ancestors who made language and knew from what bestiality its use rescued them are saying to us: Beware of interfering with its purpose! For when language is seriously interfered with, when it is disjoined from truth, be it from mere incompetence or worse, from malice, horrors can descend again on mankind.
Chinua Achebe
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I am against people reaping where they have not sown. But we have a saying that if you want to eat a toad you should look for a fat and juicy one.
Chinua Achebe
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I think the language that we use in dealing with one another is very important. And even if I am called upon to bring out some money to support a regime, and I am entitled to say I do not like what that regime does and obviously I am not going to put money there - you cannot really say this is wrong or this is unreasonable.
Chinua Achebe
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A child cannot pay for its mother’s milk.
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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When I think of the standing, the importance and the erudition of all these people who see nothing about racism in Heart of Darkness, I'm convinced that we must really be living in different worlds.
Chinua Achebe
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I am not an early-morning person I don't like to get out of bed, and so I don't begin writing at five A.M., though some people, I hear, do. I write once my day has started. And I can work late into the night, also.
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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[Would] a sensible man spit out the juicy morsel that good fortune put in his mouth?
Chinua Achebe
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The man that brings ant-infested faggots into his hut should not grumble when lizards begin to pay him a visit.
Chinua Achebe
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After a war life catches desperately at passing hints of normalcy like vines entwining a hollow twig.
Chinua Achebe
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What a country needs to do is be fair to all its citizens - whether people are of a different ethnicity or gender.
Chinua Achebe
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A functioning, robust democracy requires a healthy educated, participatory followership, and an educated, morally grounded leadership.
Chinua Achebe