Quote

I don’t know any other way to live but to wake up everyday armed with my convictions, not yielding them to the threat of danger and to the power and force of people who might despise me.

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
Power
Armed
Live
Despise
Might
Wake
Way
Conviction
People
Threat
Everyday
Danger
Yielding
Force
Convictions

More quotes by Wole Soyinka

Image
You accept whoever you are interacting with, directly, or indirectly.
Wole Soyinka
Image
How do I feel when I am invited to a congregation of scientists? I feel quite at home. When they break into their cultic scientific argot, I know when I'm not wanted and step out for a drink.
Wole Soyinka
Image
There is something really horrific for any human being who feels he is being consumed by other people.
Wole Soyinka
Image
The media must be used effectively to reach the masses. You have to find a new language in which to address the people and demonstrate what is possible.
Wole Soyinka
Image
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
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
As a global citizen, I sometimes feel like denying my identity.
Wole Soyinka
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Society itself is responsible for the degradation.
Wole Soyinka
Image
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.
Wole Soyinka
Image
I am a very curious person I'll always ask: is this thing true, is it not true? And I use my own means to investigate and come to my conclusion.
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 don't really consider myself a novelist, it just came out purely by accident.
Wole Soyinka
Image
I believe that each writer must decide in which language he or she is most comfortable.
Wole Soyinka
Image
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
Image
The hand that dips into the bottom of the pot will eat the biggest snail.
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
. . . as far as the regime is concerned, well, the play is sheer terror for them. Because they feel, How dare - how dare anybody lift his or her voice in criticism against us? We have the guns. Their level of paranoia and power-drunkenness is unbelievable.
Wole Soyinka