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Writers are human. I shudder to think how I must sometimes appear to others.
Wole Soyinka
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Wole Soyinka
Age: 90
Born: 1934
Born: July 13
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Essayist
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Writer
Akinwande Oluwole Soyinka
Akinwande Oluwole Wole Soyinka
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Shudder
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Writers
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Sometimes
More quotes by Wole Soyinka
I'm not one of those writers I learned about who get up in the morning, put a piece of paper in their typewriter machine and start writing. That I've never understood.
Wole Soyinka
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
No man beholds his mother's womb Yet who denies it's there? Coiled To the navel of the world is that Endless cord that links us all To the great Origin. If I lose my way. The trailing cord will bring me to the roots.
Wole Soyinka
When you are looking for corruption, you should look at the entire stratum of the society, while some forms of corruption are direct, others are indirect.
Wole Soyinka
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
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
Sadly however, I discovered in one particular case that a colleague went and paid the bribe on my behalf, just to get our mission fulfilled. That was painful, and it strained our friendship.
Wole Soyinka
My interest in culture generally is a comparative one, and I think that's where the word joy, I think, can be applicable. There's joy in actually seeing the relatedness, the connectedness of different cultures or recognising, for instance, your own culture in another or another culture in your own culture and feeling an air to all of them.
Wole Soyinka
It's the place to begin, always -- to return to home, literally.
Wole Soyinka
Next to the commodities of corruption, and religion, however, Nigeria is the world capital of rumour mongering.
Wole Soyinka
We live in the real world - we live within a certain history of the plague that has landed on us.
Wole Soyinka
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
As a global citizen, I sometimes feel like denying my identity.
Wole Soyinka
Suddenly the world has run amok and left you alone and sane behind
Wole Soyinka
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
Don't take shadows too seriously. Reality is your only safety. Continue to reject illusion.
Wole Soyinka
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
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
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
When you start a political party, you are creating space for yourself. So many people were shocked when they realized that I was serious and had no interest in occupying any political position, so they started to fall out one by one.
Wole Soyinka