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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
Continents
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African
Even
Disappointment
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Nigeria
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State

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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.
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Writers - human. I shudder to think how I must sometimes appear to others.
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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.
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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.
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My definition of slavery is the deprivation of human volition, any form of relationship between two peoples which is based on the deprivation of volition of one side.
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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The hand that dips into the bottom of the pot will eat the biggest snail.
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Sadness is twilight's kiss on earth.
Wole Soyinka
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I can look violence in the face and either reject or accept it.
Wole Soyinka
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For me, justice is the prime condition of humanity.
Wole Soyinka
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In European and American society, many pundits started to lament the death of literature looking at youth who were getting more and more attracted to sitcoms - hard, adventure films and said, our children are no longer reading, or else they're reading cartoons.
Wole Soyinka
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I grew up with a very strong sense of what is just and what is not or, to put it this way, I grew up with a keen sense of a division, the reality of a division of perception in people's lives between those who govern and those who govern.
Wole Soyinka
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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
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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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As a global citizen, I sometimes feel like denying my identity.
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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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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I have no money to give to you but I have ideas and organizational capacity.
Wole Soyinka
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Intolerance has become, I think, the reigning ideology of the world today, the intolerance versus intolerance and it's taken on lethal proportions.
Wole Soyinka
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We live in the real world - we live within a certain history of the plague that has landed on us.
Wole Soyinka