Chinua Achebe

They have not always elected the best leaders, particularly after a long period in which they have not used this facility of free election. You tend to lose the habit.

When a mad man walks naked, it is his kinsmen who feel shame, not himself.

One of the truest tests of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised.

A goat does not eat into a hens stomach no matter how friendly the two may be.

One of the truest tests of integrity is a blunt refusal to be compromised.

Nigeria has had a complicated colonial history. My work has examined that part of our story extensively.

The damage done in one year can sometimes take ten or twenty years to repair.

There was a saying in Umuofia that as a man danced so the drums were beaten for him.

When old people speak it is not because of the sweetness of words in our mouths; it is because we see something which you do not see.

Oh, the most important thing about myself is that my life has been full of changes. Therefore, when I observe the world, I don't expect to see it just like I was seeing the fellow who lives in the next room.

The only thing we have learnt from experience is that we learn nothing from experience.

The last four or five hundred years of European contact with Africa produced a body of literature that presented Africa in a very bad light and Africans in very lurid terms. The reason for this had to do with the need to justify the slave trade and slavery.

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

The impatient idealist says: 'Give me a place to stand and I shall move the earth.' But such a place does not exist. We all have to stand on the earth itself and go with her at her pace.

The whole idea of a stereotype is to simplify. Instead of going through the problem of all this great diversity - that it's this or maybe that - you have just one large statement; it is this.

Writers dont give prescriptions. They give headaches

The most important thing about myself is that my life has been full of changes. Therefore, when I observe the world, I don't expect to see it just like I was seeing the fellow who lives in the next room.

Stories serve the purpose of consolidating whatever gains people or their leaders have made or imagine they have made in their existing journey thorough the world.

The people you see in Nigeria today have always lived as neighbors in the same space for as long as we can remember. So it's a matter of settling down, lowering the rhetoric, the level of hostility in the rhetoric is too high.

Once you allow yourself to identify with the people in a story, then you might begin to see yourself in that story even if on the surface it's far removed from your situation.

When I began going to school and learned to read, I encountered stories of other people and other lands.

People say that if you find water rising up to your ankle, that's the time to do something about it, not when it's around your neck.

A man who makes trouble for others is also making trouble for himself.

My position is that serious and good art has always existed to help, to serve, humanity. Not to indict. I don't see how art can be called art if its purpose is to frustrate humanity.

I tell my students, it's not difficult to identify with somebody like yourself, somebody next door who looks like you. What's more difficult is to identify with someone you don't see, who's very far away, who's a different color, who eats a different kind of food. When you begin to do that then literature is really performing its wonders.

The whole idea of a stereotype is to simplify. Instead of going through the problem of all this great diversity that it's this or maybe that you have just one large statement; it is this.

The writer cannot expect to be excused from the task of reeducation and regeneration that must be done. In fact, he should march right in front.

When the British came to Ibo land, for instance, at the beginning of the 20th century, and defeated the men in pitched battles in different places, and set up their administrations, the men surrendered. And it was the women who led the first revolt.

People from different parts of the world can respond to the same story if it says something to them about their own history and their own experience.

Art is man's constant effort to create for himself a different order of reality from that which is given to him.

When a tradition gathers enough strength to go on for centuries you dont just turn it off one day.

Nigera is what it is because its leaders are not what they should be.

A coward may cover the ground with his words but when the time comes to fight he runs away.

A functioning, robust democracy requires a healthy educated, participatory followership, and an educated, morally grounded leadership.

When a tradition gathers enough strength to go on for centuries, you don't just turn it off one day.

Let the kite perch and let the eagle perch too. If one says no to the other, let his wing break.

In fact, I thought that Christianity was very a good and a very valuable thing for us. But after a while, I began to feel that the story that I was told about this religion wasn't perhaps completely whole, that something was left out.

Once you allow yourself to identify with the people in a story, then you might begin to see yourself in that story even if on the surface it's far removed from your situation. This is what I try to tell my students: this is one great thing that literature can do - it can make us identify with situations and people far away.

What a country needs to do is be fair to all its citizens - whether people are of a different ethnicity or gender.

The whole idea of a stereotype is to simplify. Instead of going through the problem of all this great diversity - that it's this or maybe that - you have just one large statement; it is this.

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.

While we do our good works let us not forget that the real solution lies in a world in which charity will have become unnecessary.

Democracy is not something you put away for ten years, and then in the 11th year you wake up and start practicing again. We have to begin to learn to rule ourselves again.

Every lizard lies on its belly, so we cannot tell which has a belly-ache.

When we are comfortable and inattentive we run the risk of committing grave injustices absentmindedly.