Wole Soyinka Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• People say human nature is a very vague expression, people tend to say human nature is corruptible anyway and it comes from a theological point of view, goes back to the Garden of Eden, that there is always this corrupt gene waiting to be activated that we inherited from the very beginning. I don't believe in that theological excuse.

  Wole Soyinka

  Believe, Garden, Views

  Source: saharareporters.com

  56 Copy quote

• I think that feeling that if one believed absolutely in any cause, then one must have the confidence, the self-certainty, to go through with that particular course of action.

  Wole Soyinka

  Confidence, Thinking, Self

  FaceBook post by Wole Soyinka from Mar 19, 2017

  18 Copy quote

• I consider the process of gestation just as important as when you're actually sitting down putting words to the paper.

  Wole Soyinka

  Writing, Important, Sitting Down

  38 Copy quote

• Well, the first thing is that truth and power for me form an antithesis, an antagonism, which will hardly ever be resolved. I can define in fact, can simplify the history of human society, the evolution of human society, as a contest between power and freedom.

  Wole Soyinka

  Firsts, Facts, Evolution

  FaceBook post by Wole Soyinka from Jan 23, 2015

  23 Copy quote

• 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.

  Wole Soyinka

  Fighting, Agency, Law

  Source: saharareporters.com

  5 Copy quote

• I can look violence in the face and either reject or accept it.

  Wole Soyinka

  Looks, Faces, Violence

  Source: www.motherjones.com

  13 Copy quote

• And gradually they're beginning to recognize the fact that there's nothing more secure than a democratic, accountable, and participatory form of government. But it's sunk in only theoretically, it has not yet sunk in completely in practical terms.

  Wole Soyinka

  Government, Facts, Form

  FaceBook post by Wole Soyinka from May 14, 2013

  31 Copy quote

• 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.

  Wole Soyinka

  Morning, Writing, Typewriters

  27 Copy quote

• We do not ask the mountain's aid to crack a walnut.

  Wole Soyinka

  Mountain, Cracks, Aids

  Wole Soyinka (1989). “Selected poems”

  19 Copy quote

• With theatre, you can interpret the most complex play on stage for it have meaning to an audience because you're dealing in images, you're dealing in action, you can use different idioms to interpret and clarify something which is obscured in the reading and of course there are different kinds of play, there are mythological plays, there are what I call the dramatic sketches, direct political theatre which is virtually everybody, but I find that you can use the stage as a social vehicle, you know, which any kind of audience.

  Wole Soyinka

  Reading, Play, Political

  Source: www.nobelprize.org

  7 Copy quote

• But when you're deprived of it for a lengthy period then you value human companionship. But you have to survive and so you devise all kinds of mental exercises and it's amazing.

  Wole Soyinka

  Exercise, Companionship, Kind

  23 Copy quote

• 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.

  Wole Soyinka

  Taken, Thinking, Names

  18 Copy quote

• We wasted a lot of creative energy in that immediate post colonial era, when there was a struggle between, you know, the Cold War between the capitalism and communism. Many writers just wasted their energy and their talent because they want to be ideologically correct and of course all they produced was propaganda.

  Wole Soyinka

  War, Struggle, Creative

  Source: www.nobelprize.org

  17 Copy quote

• I don't really consider myself a novelist, it just came out purely by accident.

  Wole Soyinka

  Novelists, Accidents

  9 Copy quote

• I never hesitated, as a student, in embracing the necessity of violence. In South Africa, I didn't just accept it; I looked forward to it as a mission.

  Wole Soyinka

  Violence, Students, Accepting

  Source: www.motherjones.com

  22 Copy quote

• 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.

  Wole Soyinka

  Creative, Understanding, Culture

  Source: www.nobelprize.org

  4 Copy quote

• My interest in culture generally is a comparative one, and I think that's where the word joy, I think, can be applicable. There's joy in actually seeing the relatedness, the connectedness of different cultures or recognising, for instance, your own culture in another or another culture in your own culture and feeling an air to all of them.

  Wole Soyinka

  Thinking, Air, Joy

  Source: www.nobelprize.org

  9 Copy quote

• Of course I've enjoyed having the Nobel Prize, the prestige that goes along with it, the money that came with it in particular. I was the typical, still am to some extent, impecunious writer, just struggling to make ends meet, so that, nobody's going to deny that at all. In fact, if they want to give it to me a second time, I'm standing by, ready to receive it, but it's a problem, it's a real problem and then expectations and then you have monsters like Sani Abacha who come up from time to time and who would have died a happy man if he'd succeeded in hanging a Nobel Laureate for literature.

  Wole Soyinka

  Real, Struggle, Men

  Source: www.nobelprize.org

  23 Copy quote

• No man beholds his mother's womb Yet who denies it's there? Coiled To the navel of the world is that Endless cord that links us all To the great Origin. If I lose my way. The trailing cord will bring me to the roots.

  Wole Soyinka

  Mother, Men, Roots

  Wole Soyinka (1984). “Six Plays”, Methuen Drama

  9 Copy quote

• Let's say there are prospects for a new Nigeria, but I don't think we have a new Nigeria yet.

  Wole Soyinka

  Thinking, Prospects, Nigeria

  19 Copy quote

• As I grew older and more mature, I've been able to move beyond the immediate response of violence to a projection of the pragmatic, political consequences of that violence. So it's an effort to attain equilibrium.

  Wole Soyinka

  Moving, Effort, Political

  Source: www.motherjones.com

  4 Copy quote

• My father used to tell me stories before I fell asleep. When the children would gather, at a certain point, I had a tendency to make up my own elementary variations on stories I had heard, or to invent totally new ones.

  Wole Soyinka

  Children, Father, Stories

  21 Copy quote

• I began writing early - very, very early... I was already writing short stories for the radio and selling poems to poetry and art festivals; I was involved in school plays; I wrote essays, so there was no definite moment when I said, 'Now I'm a writer.' I've always been a writer.

  Wole Soyinka

  Art, Writing, School

  FaceBook post by Wole Soyinka from Jan 02, 2015

  16 Copy quote

• It's the place to begin, always -- to return to home, literally.

  Wole Soyinka

  Home, Return

  7 Copy quote

• Very conscious of the fact that an effort was being made to destroy my mind, because I was deprived of books, deprived of any means of writing, deprived of human companionship. You never know how much you need it until you're deprived of it.

  Wole Soyinka

  Book, Writing, Mean

  19 Copy quote

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