Wole Soyinka Quotes

The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism.

A tiger doesn't proclaim his tigritude, he pounces

Romance is the sweetening of the soul With fragrance offered by the stricken heart.

Some of us – poets are not exactly poets. We live sometimes – beyond the word.

The man dies in all those that keep silent.

Books and all forms of writing are terror to those who wish to suppress truth.

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?

Don't take shadows too seriously. Reality is your only safety. Continue to reject illusion.

The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny

The hand that dips into the bottom of the pot will eat the biggest snail.

Well, I think the Yoruba gods are truthful. Truthful in the sense that i consider religion and the construct of deities simply an extension of human qualities taken, if you like, to the nth degree. i mistrust gods who become so separated from humanity that enormous crimes can be committed in their names. i prefer gods who can be brought down to earth and judged, if you like.

For the fire consumes all but the arsonist.

The Mind is the sole coefficient of Time and Space. - Wole Soyinka

Today, the constituency of fear has become much broader, far less selective

The arrogant elimination of the Djaouts of our world must nerve us to pursue our own combative doctrine, namely: that peaceful cohabitation on this planet demands that while the upholders of any creed are free to adopt their own existential absolutes, the right of others to do the same is thereby rendered implicit and sacrosanct. Thus the creed of inquiry, of knowledge and exchange of ideas, must be upheld as an absolute, as ancient and eternal as any other.

If you believe in democracy, are you not thereby obliged to accept, without discrimination, the fall-outs that come with a democratic choice, even if this means the termination of the democratic process itself?

For now, let us simply observe that the assault on human dignity is one of the prime goals of the visitation of fear, a prelude to the domination of the mind and the triumph of power

O tigre não precisa de proclamar a sua trigritude. Salta sobre a sua presa e exerce-se tigre.

Profanity is the name given to the defilement of the sanctity of human life.

Books and all forms of writing have always been objects of terror to those who seek to suppress truth.

A tiger does not proclaim its tigritude. It pounces. —Wole Soyinka, Sub-Saharan Africa’s first Nobel Laureate

The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny.-Wole Soyinka

The fault, of course, is not in religion, but in the fanatic of every religion. Fanaticism remains the greatest carrier of the spores of fear, and the rhetoric of religion, with the hysteria it so readily generates, is fast becoming the readiest killing device of contemporary times.

Die koloniale Theatertradition fungierte ja nicht nur als Feindbild, sie konnte andererseits auch eine Reihe von Einflüssen und Vorbildern anbieten. So war etwa die Wiederbelebung der irischen folk tradition in der Zeit der Jahrhundertwende, die sich um Autoren wie W.B.Yeats, J.M.Synge und dem Abbey Theatre vollzog, besonders in den 1950er Jahren für Künstler in der Dritten Welt, die ihrerseits im Prozess der Selbstdefinition begriffen waren, eine wichtige Quelle der Inspiration. Sowohl Wole Soyinka als auch Derek Walcott geben an, sie hätten starke Einflüsse von dieser Bewegung erhalten, speziell in der Frühphase ihrer Arbeit.

The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny.

— Позволю себе сказать, что не вижу особой враждебности между вами. — Это же и есть цивилизация. Мы все тут очень цивилизованные.

A tiger doesn't proclaim its tigerness; it jumps on its prey

of unseasonal but nonetheless good tidings.

Sadly, it is within the religious domain that the phenomenon of rhetorical hysteria takes its most devastating form. I am aware that, in some minds, this tends to be regarded as a delicate subject. Let me declare very simply that I do not share such a sentiment. There is nothing in the least delicate about the slaughter of innocents. We all subscribe to the lofty notions contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but, for some reason, become suddenly coy and selective when it comes to defending what is obviously the most elementary of these rights, which is the right to life. One of my all-time favourite lines comes from the black American poet Langston Hughes. It reads, simply, 'There is no lavender word for lynch'.

So, once again, back to the question - just what IS power? Is it perhaps no more than a deadly mutation of ambition, one that may or may not translate into social activity? Any fool, any moron, any psychopath can aspire to the seizure and exercise of power, and of course the more psychopathic, the more efficient: Hitler, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Sergeant Doe and the latest in the line of the unconscionably driven, our own lately departed General Sanni Abacha - all have proved that power, as long as you are sufficiently ruthless, amoral and manipulative, is within the grasp of even the mentally deficient.

In any case, the Christian world is not one, neither is the Islamic, nor does their combined authority speak to or for the entire world, but the world of the fanatic IS one and it cuts across all religions, ideologies and vocations. The tributaries that feed the cesspool of fanaticism may ooze from sources separated by history, clime and race, by injustices and numerous privations, but they arrive at the same destination - the zone of unquestioning certitude - sped by a common impetus that licences each to proclaim itself the pure and unsullied among the polluted. The zealot is one that creates a Supreme Being, or Supreme Purpose, in his or her own image, then carries out the orders of that solipsistic device that commands from within, in lofty alienation from, and utter contempt of, society and community.

Things do not always happen as one plans. There are many disappointments in life. There is always the unexpected. You plan carefully, you decide on one step after another, and then...well, that is life. We are not God. So you see, one cannot afford to be weighed down by the unexpected. You will find that only determination will bring one through, sheer determination. And faith in God. Don't ever neglect your prayers....

In one form or the other, the quest for human dignity has proved to be one of the most propulsive elements for wars, civil strife and willing sacrifice. Yet the entitlement to dignity, enshrined among the 'human rights', does not aspire to being the most self-evident, essential need for human survival, such as food, or physical health. Compared to that other candidate for the basic impulse of human existence - self-preservation - it may even be deemed self-indulgent.

the very least we can live with is an agreement that does not reduce us to slaves of imposition, but makes us partners of consent. Yes, we are compelled to make peace, we submit to force majeure, but leave us at least a piece of clothing to cover our nudity. This is the motivation behind every formula of diplomatic contrivance that is sometimes described as face-saving, and wise indeed is the victor who knows that, in order to shield his own rear from the elements, he must not denude his opponents.

Everything is linked,' said an enraptured Baremboim on stage; 'everyone is linked, all our actions have ramifications, and music is a teacher of this interconnected reality.' There was, however, in the letter a mundane, prosaic footnote that nibbled at the very edges of possible understanding, since understanding must always be preceded by human curiosity. Perhaps it will vanish in the charged space between one suicide bomber and the next military bulldozer that buries human beings alive within the imagined security of their own homes; perhaps it will join other shards of recollected moments of curiosity and discovery, to weld into a vessel of receptivity and response.

I have no father, eater of left-overs.

Power, of course. The primitive fear of being controlled. It does not matter whether it is an invasion from outer space or power wielded from a subterranean command post: some alien force is about to take control on us, to dominate - and, if necessary in the process, to terminate our existence. We never stop to think - or, at best, a secondary consideration is whether such a force might be for the good, that humanity might indeed be improved by such a takeover. Volition, to which we desperately cling, is the very definition of our mature completion as social beings.

For how would he explain to her that the sluggish bilgewater which twice, when he called the paper, lapped the receiver at the other end seemed to evoke the same squelch as her piano-key armpits.

If you are going to read theory (and you should), engage with postcolonial writers—the work of Frantz Fanon and Wole Soyinka were revelatory to me—and read up on the Black Radical Tradition: try people like Angela Davis, Fred Moten, Robin D. G. Kelley, George Lipsitz, and Avery Gordon.

The point is that as a Humanist, you’d be in distinguished company, along with Thomas Jefferson, John Lennon, Winston Churchill, Margaret Sanger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Voltaire, David Hume, Salman Rushdie, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Confucius, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Wole Soyinka, Kurt Vonnegut, Zora Neale Hurston, Mark Twain, Margaret Meade, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Einstein, Darwin, and more than a billion people worldwide.

Yes, you know damned well what you should have done if you sincerely desired their surrender. You could have dropped it [the atom bomb] on one of their mountains, even in the sea, anywhere they could see what would happen if they persisted in the war, but you chose instead to drop it on peopled cities. I know you, the white mentality: Japanese, Chinese, Africans, we are all subhuman. You would drop an atom bomb on Abeokuta or any of your colonies if it suited you!

Since I’ve written quite a number of songs for my plays, I would like to be nominated for a Grammy,