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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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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
Fellow
Nigeria
Fellows
Intellectuals
Shame
Continent
State
Conferences
Bigs
Continents
States
Heads
Even
African
Disappointment

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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.
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The man dies in all those that keep silent.
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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.
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I can look violence in the face and either reject or accept it.
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. . . 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.
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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.
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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.
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Romance is the sweetening of the soul With fragrance offered by the stricken heart.
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History teaches us to beware of the excitation of the liberated and the injustices that often accompany their righteous thirst for justice.
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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.
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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.
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We all have our individual artistic temperaments as well as partisanships in creative directions. And we have strong opinions on the merits of the products of our occupation.
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People say human nature is a very vague expression, people tend to say human nature is corruptible anyway and it comes from a theological point of view, goes back to the Garden of Eden, that there is always this corrupt gene waiting to be activated that we inherited from the very beginning. I don't believe in that theological excuse.
Wole Soyinka
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Each time I think Ive created time for myself, along comes a throwback to disrupt my private space.
Wole Soyinka
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You accept whoever you are interacting with, directly, or indirectly.
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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Governance can dig itself into a huge hole and not even know it's in there.
Wole Soyinka
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Pity you can't be present during my periodic fault-finding sessions with my image in the mirror!
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We live in the real world - we live within a certain history of the plague that has landed on us.
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Arts and the Sciences are a natural symbiosis. They stem from the same human existential impulse - exploration. Exploration of what lies beneath the surface, and re-confuguration of elements of what we call reality.
Wole Soyinka