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The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism.

Wole Soyinka

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Wole Soyinka
Age: 90
Born: 1934
Born: July 13
Author
Essayist
Novelist
Philosopher
Playwright
Poet
Professor
Translator
Writer
Akinwande Oluwole Soyinka
Akinwande Oluwole Wole Soyinka
Threat
Criticism
Greatest
Freedom
Inspirational
Absence

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Only 4 sets of people can vote for the PDP: (1) those who are intellectually blind (2) those who are blinded by ethnicity (3) those who are blinded by corruption and therefore afraid of the unknown, should power change hands and finally (4) those who are suffering from a combination of the above terminal sicknesses.
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The idea of having to make constant reference to politics is anathema to my calling as a writer.
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When a leader encourages the culture of impunity, the society is lost and it makes the work harder for the rest of us.
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Being the first black Nobel laureate, and the first African, the African world considered me personal property. I lost the remaining shreds of my anonymity, even to walk a few yards in London, Paris or Frankfurt without being stopped.
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I happen to be unfortunately temperamental. No, my temperament is also, what you describe to rainfalls, the will of society, to combat a number of contradictions. That happens to be my creative temperament.
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We do not ask the mountain's aid to crack a walnut.
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You accept whoever you are interacting with, directly, or indirectly.
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Each time I think Ive created time for myself, along comes a throwback to disrupt my private space.
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The man dies in all those that keep silent.
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Sadness is twilight's kiss on earth.
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My father used to tell me stories before I fell asleep. When the children would gather, at a certain point, I had a tendency to make up my own elementary variations on stories I had heard, or to invent totally new ones.
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Well, first of all I'll say that I come alive best in theater.
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Writers are human. I shudder to think how I must sometimes appear to others.
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Society itself is responsible for the degradation.
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I have one abiding religion-human liberty.
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For me, justice is the prime condition of humanity.
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I think I'm a very lazy writer and by that I mean that I do not battle, I don't struggle too hard against it. If I have difficulties in the writing, I just go and do other things. I don't feel a compulsion to write.
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Next to the commodities of corruption, and religion, however, Nigeria is the world capital of rumour mongering.
Wole Soyinka
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If you are corrupt and you have extra cash you are able to shut the mouth of your accuser and they will be silenced.
Wole Soyinka
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Don't feel that you have to tailor your literature a particular way to please any school of ideology. There will emerge in its own right, effortlessly, some kind of ideological direction which is a reflection of your thinking and you want your thinking, above all.
Wole Soyinka