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The writer is the visionary of his people... He anticipates, he warns.

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
Anticipate
Writer
People
Anticipates
Warns
Visionary
Visionaries

More quotes by Wole Soyinka

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You go to conferences, and your fellow African intellectuals - and even heads of state - they all say: 'Nigeria is a big disappointment. It is the shame of the African continent.'
Wole Soyinka
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The man dies in all those that keep silent.
Wole Soyinka
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A human feast is an indifferent morsel to a god.
Wole Soyinka
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Power is domination, control, and therefore a very selective form of truth which is a lie.
Wole Soyinka
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There's a lot of insincerity about the actions of our legislators they create distractions - like this anti-gay law you alluded to - and try to mobilise, to exacerbate people's emotions. Until the legislators started making laws, people minded, generally, their own business.
Wole Soyinka
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Well, the first thing is that truth and power for me form an antithesis, an antagonism, which will hardly ever be resolved. I can define in fact, can simplify the history of human society, the evolution of human society, as a contest between power and freedom.
Wole Soyinka
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Sadness is twilight's kiss on earth.
Wole Soyinka
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There's something about the theater which makes my fingertips tingle.
Wole Soyinka
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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.
Wole Soyinka
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To achieve any change in the minds of the youth, there must be reorientation in terms of materialistic tendencies, corruption and crime generally.
Wole Soyinka
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You have the entire gamut of human experience captured in the mythology of the Yoruba. This is what makes the Yoruba mythology a natural source material for me in my creative endeavours.
Wole Soyinka
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Mythology can be used, and has been used, even to re-state, you know, the very urgent problems of the world.
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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When you fight corruption, corruption strikes back and that is the truth because when you fight corruption, you get confidence and when it gets to impunity, then it gets aggressive and says, 'oh, so you think you are different? You think you are tough and different?' This is why some of us are almost permanently in the libel court.
Wole Soyinka
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We wasted a lot of creative energy in that immediate post colonial era, when there was a struggle between, you know, the Cold War between the capitalism and communism. Many writers just wasted their energy and their talent because they want to be ideologically correct and of course all they produced was propaganda.
Wole Soyinka
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Very conscious of the fact that an effort was being made to destroy my mind, because I was deprived of books, deprived of any means of writing, deprived of human companionship. You never know how much you need it until you're deprived of it.
Wole Soyinka
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Looking at faces of people, one gets the feeling there's a lot of work to be done.
Wole Soyinka
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Culture is a matrix of infinite possibilities and choices. From within the same culture matrix we can extract arguments and strategies for the degradation and ennoblement of our species, for its enslavement or liberation, for the suppression of its productive potential or its enhancement.
Wole Soyinka
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Well, first of all I'll say that I come alive best in theater.
Wole Soyinka
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The media owes the responsibility to constantly tell the public the truth.
Wole Soyinka