Wole Soyinka Quotes

Writers throughout the ages have one weapon, which is literature, but they also have their responsibilities as a citizen when literature does not seem to suffice. I mean, they are not mutually exclusive. One continues to write anyway but if you are called out to demonstrate, if people are being killed in the streets, it's hardly the moment to go for your pen and paper, you know, help in one way or the other.

Wole Soyinka

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Quotes to Explore

• I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.

  

  e. e. cummings
  • Learning
  • Dance
  • Stars

• I'd always put on little shows at home, but when I was 11, I did a community event in Woodford, where anyone could go. You had three days of vocal training and performed your song at the end.

  

  Naomi Scott
  • Home
  • Song
  • Community

• When we assess the impact of technological changes, we tend to downplay things that happened a while ago.

  

  Ha-Joon Chang
  • Things
  • Changes
  • Impact

• Acting is not a mystery. There's nothing that I know that other actors don't know. We all act, we're all actors, we all know the same thing. The only thing that separates us is experience.

  

  Vincent D'Onofrio
  • Experience
  • Same
  • Mystery

• I actually started playing in little cafes around New York, and I have a lot of good friends of mine who are musicians who are struggling in New York.

  

  Oscar Isaac
  • Good
  • Friends
  • Musicians

• The train's always full of football fans going up to see matches. Oh, they make sure I hear their points of view all right. They all want to have their say about their team, and make their opinions known.

  

  Gary Lineker
  • Up
  • Team
  • Football

• All novels attempt to cut neural routes through the brain, to convince us that down this road the true future of the novel lies.

  

  Zadie Smith
  • True
  • Future
  • Brain

• I just wanted to rollerblade at Union Square.

  

  Gaby Hoffmann
  • Just
  • Union
  • Square

• When it is important for you to say something and you find a vehicle to say it, then go for it. It is so rare when that happens so I think every minute spent fighting for it is always worth it. Even if nothing ends up happening, it's still worth the fight.

  

  Salma Hayek
  • Up
  • Important
  • Think

• I love getting presents. And awards. I'd do whatever they told me to do.

  

  Jacki Weaver
  • Getting
  • Awards
  • Presents

• I was born free.

  

  W. E. B. Du Bois
  • Free
  • Born
  • I Was Born

• A wise human would have an understanding of the supply chain and how the pieces fit together. But it's against our nature to think about it.

  

  Paolo Bacigalupi
  • Together
  • Nature
  • Understanding

• I don't like to play the victim.

  

  Barry Pepper
  • Play
  • Like
  • Victim

• It's true, too, that I'm tired of using books as political bullets and grenades. Books are too precious and wonderful to be used for long in such a fashion.

  

  Yann Martel
  • Long
  • True
  • Political

• As opposed to putting too much confidence in myself, or in an image or a scene or a set of brushes, I really want to allow the oil paint to perform, to show me the things that it wants to do, beyond my imagination.

  

  Dan Colen
  • Me
  • Imagination
  • Confidence

• No one regards what is before his feet; we all gaze at the stars.

  

  Quintus Ennius
  • Stars
  • Feet
  • Gaze

• Speak the truth, and all things alive or brute are vouchers, and the very roots of the grass underground there, do seem to stir and move to bear you witness.

  

  Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • Truth
  • Speak
  • Roots

• My dad is a Deadhead, my mom's a Jewish-American princess from Jersey.

  

  Adam Lambert
  • American
  • Dad
  • Mom

• I'm trying to get to bed, and you guys are singing 'The Whole World's in my fucking hand.' I'd rather you shut the fuck up!

  

  Jack Osbourne
  • Up
  • World
  • Trying

• And of course there's so much music in and around our family. I had a piano during Christmas because it's obviously useful through the season. There are so many people, songwriters, who are around.

  

  Ashley Judd
  • People
  • Music
  • Family

• I have a very simple approach in career: You work with the people you love.

  

  Ken Jeong
  • People
  • Work
  • Career

• So, when you divide the world into music lovers, music fans and then those people who are just very casual about their music, it's wallpaper to them, it's elevator music, it's just the thing that's playing in the background that helps them through their day.

  

  Michael Stipe R.E.M.
  • People
  • World
  • Music

• A lot of my rhymes are just to get chuckles out of people. Anybody with half a brain is going to be able to tell when I'm joking and when I'm serious.

  

  Marshall Bruce Mathers III Bad Meets Evil'
  • People
  • Funny
  • Brain

• Writers throughout the ages have one weapon, which is literature, but they also have their responsibilities as a citizen when literature does not seem to suffice. I mean, they are not mutually exclusive. One continues to write anyway but if you are called out to demonstrate, if people are being killed in the streets, it's hardly the moment to go for your pen and paper, you know, help in one way or the other.

  

  Wole Soyinka
  • People
  • Writing
  • Age