Quote

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

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
Children
Development
Grandiose
Mind
Probably
Rural
Men
Child
Happenings
Sure
Faults
Woman
Happening
Energy
Turned
Back
Average
Find
Areas

More quotes by Chinua Achebe

Image
The sun will shine on those who stand before it shines on those who kneel under them.
Chinua Achebe
Image
Serious and good art has always existed to help, to serve, humanity. Not to indict.
Chinua Achebe
Image
We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own.
Chinua Achebe
Image
There is no story that is not true, [...] The world has no end, and what is good among one people is an abomination with others.
Chinua Achebe
Image
No man however great is greater than his people
Chinua Achebe
Image
Once a novel gets going and I know it is viable, I don't then worry about plot or themes. These things will come in almost automatically because the characters are now pulling the story.
Chinua Achebe
Image
A kinsman in trouble had to be saved, not blamed anger against a brother was felt in the flesh, not in the bone.
Chinua Achebe
Image
Among the Igbo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten.
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
Image
He is a fool who treats his brother worse than a stranger.
Chinua Achebe
Image
When a mad man walks naked, it is his kinsmen who feel shame, not himself.
Chinua Achebe
Image
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
Image
Beware Okonkwo! she warned. Beware of exchanging words with Agbala. Does a man speak when a god speaks? Beware!
Chinua Achebe
Image
I find Nigeria very frustrating. I am not alone in this. There are many Nigerians abroad. As you know, the brain drain is just incredible. And when we talk to one another and there is a certain sense of frustration and but I struggle not to let the frustration degenerate into dispair.
Chinua Achebe
Image
The language of young men is pull down and destroy but an old man speaks of conciliation.
Chinua Achebe
Image
When I began going to school and learned to read, I encountered stories of other people and other lands.
Chinua Achebe
Image
When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground.
Chinua Achebe
Image
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.
Chinua Achebe
Image
Nigeria has had a complicated colonial history. My work has examined that part of our story extensively.
Chinua Achebe
Image
It is only the story...that saves our progeny from blundering like blind beggars into the spikes of the cactus fence.The story is our escortwithout it,we are blind.Does the blind man own his escort?No,neither do we the storyrather,it is the story that owns us.
Chinua Achebe