Wole Soyinka Quotes
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I'm not one of those writers I learned about who get up in the morning, put a piece of paper in their typewriter machine and start writing. That I've never understood.
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You go to conferences, and your fellow African intellectuals - and even heads of state - they all say: 'Nigeria is a big disappointment. It is the shame of the African continent.'
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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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The man dies in all those that keep silent.
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Well, some people say I'm pessimistic because I recognize the eternal cycle of evil. All I say is, look at the history of mankind right up to this moment and what do you find?
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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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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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There is not a special imposition on writers to be activists. All that does is encourage writers to write propaganda.
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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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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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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 happen to be unfortunately temperamental. No, my temperament is also, what you describe to rainfalls, the will of society, to combat a number of contradictions. That happens to be my creative temperament.
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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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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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The writer is the visionary of his people... He anticipates, he warns.
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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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My understanding of the creative process is simply that all cultures and all concerns meet at a certain point, the human point in which everything is related to one another. That has been my creative experience.
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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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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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Governance can dig itself into a huge hole and not even know it's in there.
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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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It's the place to begin, always -- to return to home, literally.
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We do not ask the mountain's aid to crack a walnut.
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Religion is all based on the mentality of "I'm right", but now today it's moved from even the question of "I'm right and I'm willing to tolerate those who agree that I am right or those who don't disturb me anyway". Now, it's a question of "If you do not accept that I'm right, I have a right to kill you". That is the mentality of religious fundamentalism today. That is the meaning of the kind of terror which we are witnessing today, that everybody is expendable who do not actually physically line up behind me.