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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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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
Must
Worlds
Different
Racism
Heart
Convinced
Really
Importance
Think
Standing
Thinking
Darkness
World
Living
People
Nothing
Erudition

More quotes by 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.
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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.
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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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The damage done in one year can sometimes take ten or twenty years to repair.
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If you ask me, Now, is it your best book? I would say, I don't really know. I wouldn't even want to say. And I'd even go on and say, I don't even think so.
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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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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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What a man does not know is greater than he.
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If you have leaders who are prepared to incite group against group it is very easy to manufacture reasons and excuses.
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No man however great is greater than his people
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Presidents do not go off on leave without telling the country.
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You might as well say that the woman lies on top of the man when they are making the babies.
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Children are very fair minded, they really are.
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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.
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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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There was a saying in Umuofia that as a man danced so the drums were beaten for him.
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I do not actually see how art, literature can be anything other that being in that domain of trying to tell us, trying to get us to see what is important in our lives.
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.
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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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It has always been quite apparent to me that no important story can fail to tell us something of value to us.
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