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Art should be on the side of humanity.

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
Side
Humanity
Sides
Art

More quotes by Chinua Achebe

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...when we are comfortable and inattentive, we run the risk of committing grave injustices absentmindedly.
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When we hear a house has fallen do we ask if the ceiling fell with it?
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Nigeria has had a complicated colonial history. My work has examined that part of our story extensively.
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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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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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Do not be in a hurry to rush into the pleasures of the world like the young antelope who danced herself lame when the main dance was yet to come.
Chinua Achebe
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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.
Chinua Achebe
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In fact, I thought that Christianity was very a good and a very valuable thing for us. But after a while, I began to feel that the story that I was told about this religion wasn't perhaps completely whole, that something was left out.
Chinua Achebe
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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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I don't like to see mistakes on the typewriter. I like a perfect script. On the typewriter I will sometimes leave a phrase that is not right, not what I want, simply because to change it would be a bit messy.
Chinua Achebe
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The world is like a Mask dancing. If you want to see it well, you do not stand in one place.
Chinua Achebe
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My weapon is literature
Chinua Achebe
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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.
Chinua Achebe
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A man to whom you do a favor will not understand if you say nothing, make no noise, just walk away. You may cause more trouble by refusing a bribe than by accepting it.
Chinua Achebe
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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.
Chinua Achebe
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Serious and good art has always existed to help, to serve, humanity. Not to indict.
Chinua Achebe
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The sun will shine on those who stand before it shines on those who kneel under them.
Chinua Achebe
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A child cannot pay for its mother’s milk.
Chinua Achebe
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Africa is people may seem too simple and too obvious to some of us. But I have found in the course of my travels through the world that the most simple things can still givwe us a lot of trouble, even the brightest among us: this is particularly so in matters concerning Africa.
Chinua Achebe
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When I began going to school and learned to read, I encountered stories of other people and other lands.
Chinua Achebe