Chinua Achebe
Chinua Achebe
Chinua Achebewas a Nigerian novelist, poet, professor, and critic. His first novel Things Fall Apartwas considered his magnum opus, and is the most widely read book in modern African literature...
NationalityNigerian
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth16 November 1930
CityOgidi, Nigeria
CountryNigeria
Chinua Achebe quotes about
use world pay
The price a world language must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of use.
lying real compassion
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.
vocabulary disease opponents
In the vocabulary of certain radical theorists contradictions are given the status of some deadly disease to which their opponents alone can succumb. But contradictions are the very stuff of life. If there had been a little dash of contradiction among the Gadarene swine some of them might have been saved from drowning.
moving thinking perspective
If you're rooted to a spot, you miss a lot of the grace. So you keep moving, and this is the way I think the world's stories should be told - from many different perspectives.
moving giving black-history
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.
mother home men
Become familiar with your home, but know also about your neighbors. The young man who never went anywhere thinks his mother is the greatest cook.
thinking allies moral
There is a moral obligation, I think, not to ally oneself with power against the powerless.
brother father fighting
When brothers fight to death a stranger inherit their father’s estate
two friendly may
A goat does not eat into a hen's stomach no matter how friendly the two may be.
responsibility air land
The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership. There is nothing basically wrong with the Nigerian land or climate or water or air or anything else. The Nigerian problem is the unwillingness or inability of its leaders to rise to the responsibility, to the challenge of personal example which are the hallmarks of true leadership.
heart thinking racism
When I think of the standing, the importance and the erudition of all these people who see nothing about racism in Heart of Darkness, I'm convinced that we must really be living in different worlds.
reality years thought-provoking
The damage done in one year can sometimes take ten or twenty years to repair.
brother clever fall
The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.
rising-up water thought-provoking
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.