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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

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Wole Soyinka
Age: 90
Born: 1934
Born: July 13
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Akinwande Oluwole Soyinka
Akinwande Oluwole Wole Soyinka
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More quotes by 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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One, a mass movement from within, which, as you know, is constantly being put down brutally but which, again, regroups and moves forward as is happening right now as we are speaking.
Wole Soyinka
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Even when I'm writing plays I enjoy having company and mentally I think of that company as the company I'm writing for.
Wole Soyinka
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The novel, for me, was an accident. I really don't consider myself a novelist.
Wole Soyinka
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The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism.
Wole Soyinka
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It's the place to begin, always -- to return to home, literally.
Wole Soyinka
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Religion has really spawned some monsters. It always has, historically. Go all the way back to the Inquisition, you know, the Crusades, the Jehad and so on.
Wole Soyinka
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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.
Wole Soyinka
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Being the first black Nobel laureate, and the first African, the African world considered me personal property. I lost the remaining shreds of my anonymity, even to walk a few yards in London, Paris or Frankfurt without being stopped.
Wole Soyinka
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One thing I can tell you is this, that I am not a methodical writer.
Wole Soyinka
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There are different kinds of artists and very often, I'll be very frank with you, I wish I were a different kind.
Wole Soyinka
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Next to the commodities of corruption, and religion, however, Nigeria is the world capital of rumour mongering.
Wole Soyinka
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Writers who open up horizons for other people are performing a function every bit as important as a consciously politicized writer.
Wole Soyinka
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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.
Wole Soyinka
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There is not a special imposition on writers to be activists. All that does is encourage writers to write propaganda.
Wole Soyinka
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And gradually they're beginning to recognize the fact that there's nothing more secure than a democratic, accountable, and participatory form of government. But it's sunk in only theoretically, it has not yet sunk in completely in practical terms.
Wole Soyinka
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Some of us – poets are not exactly poets. We live sometimes – beyond the word.
Wole Soyinka
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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
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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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It is not fair to those who fight corruption that they have to fight the aggressiveness, the impunity of the corrupt.
Wole Soyinka