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WOLE SOYINKA’S QUOTES

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1.    ‘Books and all forms of writing are terror to those who wish to suppress the truth.’
2.   ‘The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism.’
3.   ‘The hand that dips into the bottom of the pot will eat the biggest snail.’
4.  ‘Don’t take shadows too seriously, reality is our only safety; continue to reject illusions.’
5.   ‘You are not a complete human being if you are not educated, schooled or cultured.’
6.   ‘Nigeria is in war and only competence can solve the problem, not prayers.’
7.  ‘Bluff is no substitute for bullets.’
8.   ‘I don’t know any other way to live but to wake up everyday armed with my convictions, not yielding them to  the threat of danger and to the power and force of people who might despise me.’
9.   ‘But the ultimate lesson is just sit down and write. That’s all.’
10.                   ‘My horizon on humanity is enlarged by reading the writers of poems, seeing a painting, listening to some music, some opera, which has nothing at all to do with a volatile human condition or struggle or whatever. It enriches me as a human being.’
11.                   ‘And I believe that the best learning process of any kind of craft is just to look at the work of others.’
12.                   ‘Human life has meaning only to that degree and as long as it is lived in the service of humanity.’
13.                   ‘I’m not sure I’m trying to communicate a message. I’m just trying to be part of the movement away from the unacceptable present.’
14.                  ‘A tiger does not shout its tigritude, it acts.’
15.                   ‘I take friendship very seriously.’
16.                  ‘No human is completely fearless.’
17.                  ‘The phenomenon of creativity, we know, is closely related to the ability to yoke together separate, and even seemingly incompatible matrices.’
18.                   ‘I consider the process of gestation just as important as when you’re actually sitting down putting words to paper.’
19.                   ‘You cannot live a normal existence if you haven’t taken care of a problem that affects your life and affects the lives of others, values that you hold which in fact, define your very existence.’
20.                  ‘Art is solace; art is vision, and when I pick up a literary work, I am a consumer of literature for its own sake.’
21.                   ‘Looking at faces of people, one gets the feeling there’s a lot of work to be done.’
22.                  ‘I don’t really consider myself a novelist, it just came purely by accident.’
23.                  ‘Writers and intellectuals have a duty to humanity. It is to insist that the human entity remains the primary asset in overall development; thus, it must be safeguarded.’
24.                 ‘An idyllic period of my existence was when I had a den attached to my home…a writing den, and no one had access to that unless they had their own special visa, applied for weeks in advance.’

25.                  ‘One has to confront history honestly.’

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