Binyavanga Wainaina Quotes
I knew I didn't want to come out in the 'New Yorker'; it just felt wrong. It needed an African conversation.
Quotes to Explore
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Every good movie I watch, the hero becomes my favourite. I start blushing every time a hero romances a heroine.
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I have legendary massive breakfasts at hotels. I don't hold back. I'll get there at 7A.M. and I'll be the last out at 11 A.M., having gone up and down the buffet seven times.
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Our need for that exterior god that sits up there and judges us... will diminish and eventually disappear.
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Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power to that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.
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Some luck lies in not getting what you thought you wanted but getting what you have, which once you have got it you may be smart enough to see is what you would have wanted had you known.
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I don't want to overthrow the government. I wanna fire 'em.
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This was more than just a cow - this was an entire career I was looking at.
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Also we will be carrying food and clothes for the Expedition Two crew. And as well as spare parts for the EVA that will be conducted from the station in the following months.
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I want every kid to go to college and be like a normal student. I want them to be able to go to a movie, go to a concert. I want them to be able to have that opportunity. But if you're paying kids, are you going to pay a lineman less than you're paying a quarterback? I don't know how to explain that stuff.
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I think to try to understand human behavior and why people do what they do, and what in their lives have shaped them and impacted them to be who they are, it's something. I mean, that's my entire life.
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Democracy will win - because a government’s legitimacy can only come from citizens; because in this age of information and empowerment, people want more control over their lives, not less; and because, more than any other form of government ever devised, only democracy, rooted in the sanctity of the individual, can deliver real progress.
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Slowly but inexorably crawling upon my consciousness and rising above every other impression, came a dizzying fear of the unknown; a fear all the greater because I could not analyse it, and seeming to concern a stealthily approaching menace; not death, but some nameless, unheard-of thing inexpressibly more ghastly and abhorrent.
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Hitler didn't want to exterminate the Jews at the time. He wanted to expel the Jews.
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Crime, folly, sickness and all phenomena must be contemplated with complete freedom from fear aversion or shame. Otherwise we shall fail to see accurately, and interpret intelligently; in which case we shall be unable to outwit and outfight them.
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How many is there, John?.Did you learn to whisper in a sawmill?
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The value of the goal lies in the goal itself; and therefore the goal cannot be attained unless it is pursued for its own sake.
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Between man and his social environment there is a reciprocal action. Men make society what it is and society makes men what they are, and the result is therefore a kind of vicious circle.
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Ambivalence is like carbon monoxide - undetectable yet deadly.
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There is no back label with a story on a beer can.
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Once in a while I get inspired and finish my act with the hillbilly hoedown.
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All sporting ambition considered, there should always be a relationship to Germany.
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I knew I didn't want to come out in the 'New Yorker'; it just felt wrong. It needed an African conversation.
