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
Mountain
Asks
Walnut
Walnuts
Crack
Cracks
Aids

More quotes by Wole Soyinka

Image
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
Image
I said: A tiger does not proclaim his tigritude, he pounces. In other words: a tiger does not stand in the forest and say: I am a tiger. When you pass where the tiger has walked before, you see the skeleton of the duiker, you know that some tigritude has been emanated there.
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
I rarely use mythology for its own sake because, as a theatre person, the mythological figures are in fact humanity to the ninth degree and Yoruba mythology in particular has fascination of being one of the most humanised mythologies in the world.
Wole Soyinka
Image
Next to the commodities of corruption, and religion, however, Nigeria is the world capital of rumour mongering.
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
I am a glutton for tranquility.
Wole Soyinka
Image
The man dies in all those that keep silent.
Wole Soyinka
Image
Alfred Nobel regretted that his invention, dynamite, was converted to degrading use, hence his creation of the Nobel Prize, as the humanist counter to the destructive power of his genius.
Wole Soyinka
Image
I think that feeling that if one believed absolutely in any cause, then one must have the confidence, the self-certainty, to go through with that particular course of action.
Wole Soyinka
Image
You cannot live a normal existence if you haven't taken care of a problem that affects your life and affects the lives of others, values that you hold which in fact define your very existence.
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
One, a mass movement from within, which, as you know, is constantly being put down brutally but which, again, regroups and moves forward as is happening right now as we are speaking.
Wole Soyinka
Image
I believe that each writer must decide in which language he or she is most comfortable.
Wole Soyinka
Image
The British inclined more towards the feudal mentality, the feudal structures rather than the more radical progressive elements who would re-shape society and institute pretty egalitarian systems of governance with opportunity for even disadvantaged people and so I found that decolonisation was not just the end of political struggle in Nigeria.
Wole Soyinka
Image
Don't take shadows too seriously. Reality is your only safety. Continue to reject illusion.
Wole Soyinka
Image
It is the human potentials that interest me. I travel and everywhere I go I am amazed at the presence of Nigerians. The intelligence, integrity, productivity, initiative.
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
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
Image
Governance can dig itself into a huge hole and not even know it's in there.
Wole Soyinka