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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
Absence
Threat
Criticism
Greatest
Freedom
Inspirational

More quotes by Wole Soyinka

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I come alive when I have assisted in bringing out the printed word on the stage, you know, and I enjoy directing plays. It's a tactile process, theatre, unlike a number of other forms of the creative work.
Wole Soyinka
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My interest in culture generally is a comparative one, and I think that's where the word joy, I think, can be applicable. There's joy in actually seeing the relatedness, the connectedness of different cultures or recognising, for instance, your own culture in another or another culture in your own culture and feeling an air to all of them.
Wole Soyinka
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Under a dictatorship, a nation ceases to exist. All that remains is a fiefdom, a planet of slaves regimented by aliens from outer-space.
Wole Soyinka
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Governance can dig itself into a huge hole and not even know it's in there.
Wole Soyinka
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My mind immediately shot to South Africa the moment I sat down to think what I was going to write, what I was going to say. There was no other choice.
Wole Soyinka
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The writer is the visionary of his people... He anticipates, he warns.
Wole Soyinka
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But the ultimate lesson is just sit down and write. That's all.
Wole Soyinka
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Be yourself. Ultimately just be yourself.
Wole Soyinka
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I am a glutton for tranquility.
Wole Soyinka
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No man beholds his mother's womb Yet who denies it's there? Coiled To the navel of the world is that Endless cord that links us all To the great Origin. If I lose my way. The trailing cord will bring me to the roots.
Wole Soyinka
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A tiger does not proclaim his tigritude, he pounces.
Wole Soyinka
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My definition of slavery is the deprivation of human volition, any form of relationship between two peoples which is based on the deprivation of volition of one side.
Wole Soyinka
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But when you're deprived of it for a lengthy period then you value human companionship. But you have to survive and so you devise all kinds of mental exercises and it's amazing.
Wole Soyinka
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Intolerance has become, I think, the reigning ideology of the world today, the intolerance versus intolerance and it's taken on lethal proportions.
Wole Soyinka
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Let's say there are prospects for a new Nigeria, but I don't think we have a new Nigeria yet.
Wole Soyinka
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Writers are human. I shudder to think how I must sometimes appear to others.
Wole Soyinka
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I have no money to give to you but I have ideas and organizational capacity.
Wole Soyinka
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I am disturbed for instance when I read that a candidate said, 'I will not probe anybody or something like that'. You don't fight corruption by sweeping everything under the carpet, you don't.
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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I cannot accept the definition of collective good as articulated by a privileged minority in society, especially when that minority is in power.
Wole Soyinka