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I can look violence in the face and either reject or accept it.

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
Looks
Rejects
Accept
Accepting
Violence
Either
Face
Faces
Look
Reject

More quotes by Wole Soyinka

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Looking at faces of people, one gets the feeling there's a lot of work to be done.
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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.
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As I grew older and more mature, I've been able to move beyond the immediate response of violence to a projection of the pragmatic, political consequences of that violence. So it's an effort to attain equilibrium.
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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.
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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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I grew up in an atmosphere where words were an integral part of culture.
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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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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.
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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.
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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.
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It's the place to begin, always -- to return to home, literally.
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I have one abiding religion-human liberty.
Wole Soyinka
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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
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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.
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There's a kind of dynamic quality about theater and that dynamic quality expresses itself in relation to, first of all, the environment in which it's being staged then the audience, the nature of the audience, the quality of the audience.
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I believe that each writer must decide in which language he or she is most comfortable.
Wole Soyinka
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And I believe that the best learning process of any kind of craft is just to look at the work of others.
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.
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If man cannot, what god dare claim perfection?
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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