Quotes

When suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool.

What has consistently escaped most Nigerians in this entire travesty is the fact that mediocrity destroys the very fabric of a country as surely as a war - ushering in all sorts of banality, ineptitude, corruption and debauchery.

[on the impact of the literature he encountered when being educated in British-style schools] I did not see myself as an African in those books. I took sides with the white men against the savages. The white man was good and reasonable and smart and courageous. The savages arrayed against him were sinister and stupid, never anything higher than cunning. I hated their guts. [But later I realized] these writers had pulled a fast one on me! I was not on Marlowe's boat steaming up the Congo in 'Heart of Darkness'. Rather, I was one of those unattractive beings jumping up and down on the riverbank, making horrid faces.

Those who can do the work of extending the frontiers of English so as to accommodate African thought-patterns must do it through their mastery of English and not out of innocence.

We shall all live. We pray for life, children, a good harvest and happiness. You will have what is good for you and I will have what is good for me. Let the kite perch and let the egret perch too. If one says no to the other, let his wing break.

The world is like a mask dancing. If you want to see it well, you do not stand in one place.

When the moon is shining the cripple becomes hungry for a walk.

Proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten.

A child's fingers are not scalded by a piece of hot yam which its mother puts into its palm.

A proud heart can survive general failure because such a failure does not prick its pride. It is more difficult and more bitter when a man fails alone.

If one finger brought oil it soiled all the others.

The land of the living was not far removed from the domain of the ancestors. There was coming and going between them, especially at festivals and also when an old man died, because an old man was very close to the ancestors. A man's life from birth to death was a series of transition rites which brought him nearer and nearer to his ancestors.

You cannot plant greatness as you plant yams or maize. Who ever planted an iroko tree - the greatest tree in the forest? You may collect all the iroko seeds in the world, open the soil and put them there. It will be in vain. The great tree chooses where to grow and we find it there, so it is with the greatness in men.

A man should hold his compound together, not plant dissension among his children

The man who brings ant-infested faggots into his hut should not grumble when lizards begin to pay him a visit

When a handshake goes beyond the elbow we know it has turned to another thing.

.What mattered was that a man had treated me as no man had a right to treat another-not even if he was master and the other slave; and my manhood requires that I made him pay for his insult in full measure.

Whatever you are is never enough; you must find a way to accept something, however small, from the other to make you whole and to save you from the mortal sin of righteousness and extremism.

We are not gladiators. But there is something we are committed to of fundamental importance, something everybody should be committed to. We are committed to the process of changing our position in the world. This is what our literature is about.

Wherever something is, something else also is. And I think it is important that whatever the regimes are saying that the artist keeps himself ready to enter the other plea. Perhaps it's not tidy perhaps we are contradicting ourselves. But one of your poets has said, "Do I contradict myself? Very well."

People create stories create people; or rather stories create people create stories.

War is war. The strong will always crush the weak. The only difference is that in the process some have made a lot of money and others a lot of misery.

Do your people have a proverb about a man looking for something inside the bag of a man looking for something?

Don't disparage the day that still has an hour of light in its hand.

A man whose horse is missing will look everywhere, even in the roof.

We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own. The Igbo, always practical, put it concretely in their proverb: He who will hold another down in the mud must stay in the mud to keep him down.

We may accept a limitation on our actions but never, under no circumstances, must we accept restriction on our thinking.

Every generation must recognize and embrace the task it is peculiarly designed by history and by providence to perform.

It is appropriate that we celebrate Martin Luther King, a man who struggled so valiantly to restore humanity to the oppressed and the oppressor.

A man who lived on the banks of the Niger should not wash his hands with spittle.