Wole Soyinka Quotes
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It is the human potentials that interest me. I travel and everywhere I go I am amazed at the presence of Nigerians. The intelligence, integrity, productivity, initiative.
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Next to the commodities of corruption, and religion, however, Nigeria is the world capital of rumour mongering.
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When you are looking for corruption, you should look at the entire stratum of the society, while some forms of corruption are direct, others are indirect.
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Don't feel that you have to tailor your literature a particular way to please any school of ideology. There will emerge in its own right, effortlessly, some kind of ideological direction which is a reflection of your thinking and you want your thinking, above all.
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Mythology can be used, and has been used, even to re-state, you know, the very urgent problems of the world.
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The man dies in all those that keep silent.
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There is only one home to the life of a river-mussel; there is only one home to the life of a tortoise; there is only one shell to the soul of man: there is only one world to the spirit of our race. If that world leaves its course and smashes on boulders of the great void, whose world will give us shelter?
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I do not believe that it is necessarily the duty of the writer to give a voice to his community. If a writer is true to his vocation, to his or her vocation, the very process of creativity enlarges these human horizons. It provides insights, even when you're not writing, when your writing's not dealing with a concrete political situation.
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There is not a special imposition on writers to be activists. All that does is encourage writers to write propaganda.
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When you fight corruption, corruption strikes back and that is the truth because when you fight corruption, you get confidence and when it gets to impunity, then it gets aggressive and says, 'oh, so you think you are different? You think you are tough and different?' This is why some of us are almost permanently in the libel court.
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I know there are writers who get up every morning and sit by their typewriter or word processor or pad of paper and wait to write. I don't function that way. I go through a long period of gestation before I'm even ready to write.
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The writer is the visionary of his people... He anticipates, he warns.
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It's the place to begin, always -- to return to home, literally.
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As a president, you've got to show some example. I am disturbed for instance when I read that a candidate said, 'I will not probe anybody or something like that'. You don't fight corruption by sweeping everything under the carpet, you don't. You just say, am going to allow the law take its course; I am going to empower the agencies which has been set up for such specific purpose of stemming the corrupt out flow of resources from this nation and don't even talk to me about corruption beyond saying you going to strengthen existing institutions.
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Let's say there are prospects for a new Nigeria, but I don't think we have a new Nigeria yet.
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Colonialism bred an innate arrogance, but when you undertake that sort of imperial adventure, that arrogance gives way to a feeling of accommodativeness. You take pride in your openness.
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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.
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If you are corrupt and you have extra cash you are able to shut the mouth of your accuser and they will be silenced.
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My mind immediately shot to South Africa the moment I sat down to think what I was going to write, what I was going to say. There was no other choice.
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Be yourself. Ultimately just be yourself.
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Only 4 sets of people can vote for the PDP: those who are intellectually blind; those who are blinded by ethnicity; those who are blinded by corruption and therefore afraid of the unknown, should power change hands; and finally those who are suffering from a combination of the above terminal sicknesses.
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I don't really consider myself a novelist, it just came out purely by accident.
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Governance can dig itself into a huge hole and not even know it's in there.
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I consider the process of gestation just as important as when you're actually sitting down putting words to the paper.