Quote

We do not ask the mountain's aid to crack a walnut.

Wole Soyinka

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Walnut
Walnuts
Crack
Cracks
Aids
Mountain
Asks

More quotes by Wole Soyinka

Image
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
Image
But theater, because of its nature, both text, images, multimedia effects, has a wider base of communication with an audience. That's why I call it the most social of the various art forms.
Wole Soyinka
Image
I never hesitated, as a student, in embracing the necessity of violence. In South Africa, I didn't just accept it I looked forward to it as a mission.
Wole Soyinka
Image
Intolerance has always been with us, you know. The moment you have ideology, we have intolerance, whether it's the secular ideology or, you know ideocratic ideology, which always brings with it some kind of intolerance.
Wole Soyinka
Image
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.
Wole Soyinka
Image
And I believe that the best learning process of any kind of craft is just to look at the work of others.
Wole Soyinka
Image
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.
Wole Soyinka
Image
When I tried to create a new political party, which I stressed that this is not my party. I believe very much that there has to be a revolution and this is a party for the young.
Wole Soyinka
Image
See, even despite pious statements to the contrary, much of the industrialized world has not yet come to terms with the recognition of the fallacy of what I call the strong man syndrome.
Wole Soyinka
Image
I consider the process of gestation just as important as when you're actually sitting down putting words to the paper.
Wole Soyinka
Image
History teaches us to beware of the excitation of the liberated and the injustices that often accompany their righteous thirst for justice.
Wole Soyinka
Image
Given the scale of trauma caused by the genocide, Rwanda has indicated that however thin the hope of a community can be, a hero always emerges. Although no one can dare claim that it is now a perfect state, and that no more work is needed, Rwanda has risen from the ashes as a model or truth and reconciliation.
Wole Soyinka
Image
The Egba kingdom was one of the very last to be ceded to the British protectorate. It remained almost an independent entity within what is now known as Nigeria, simply because of its own traditional structure of governance.
Wole Soyinka
Image
Well, first of all I'll say that I come alive best in theater.
Wole Soyinka
Image
After the death of the sadistic dictator Gen. Sanni Abacha in 1998, Nigeria underwent a one-year transitional military administration headed by Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar, who uncharacteristically bowed out precisely on the promised date for military disengagement. Did the military truly disengage, however? No.
Wole Soyinka
Image
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
Image
For me, justice is the prime condition of humanity.
Wole Soyinka
Image
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
Image
I believe that prizes are useful things for the disciplines, whether we are talking about chemistry or we're talking... It motivates, it, you know, inspires, it encourages and it brings, in the case of literature, it brings literature, the arts out of the ghetto.
Wole Soyinka
Image
Power is domination, control, and therefore a very selective form of truth which is a lie.
Wole Soyinka