Chinua Achebe: Trending quotes

“You do not know me,’ said Tortoise. ‘I am a changed man. I have learned that a man who makes trouble for others makes trouble for himself.”

“Chielo, the priestess of Agbala, called the converts the excrement of the clan, and the new faith was a mad dog that had come to eat it up.”

“The white man is very clever. He came quietly 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.”

“To me, being an intellectual doesn't mean knowing about intellectual issues; it means taking pleasure in them.”

“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.”

“When there is a big tree small ones climb on its back to reach the sun.”

“There is no story that is not true, […] The world has no end, and what is good among one people is an abomination with others.”

“People create stories create people; or rather stories create people create stories.”

“Nobody can teach me who I am.”

“Storytellers are a threat. They threaten all champions of control, they frighten usurpers of the right-to-freedom of the human spirit -- in state, in church or mosque, in party congress, in the university or wherever.”

“When suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool.”

“It is the storyteller who makes us what we are, who creates history. The storyteller creates the memory that the survivors must have - otherwise their surviving would have no meaning.”

“If I hold her hand she says, ‘Don’t touch!’
If I hold her foot she says ‘Don’t touch!’
But when I hold her waist-beads she pretends not to know.”

“One of the truest tests of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised.”

“The sun will shine on those who stand before it shines on those who kneel under them.”

“When the moon is shining the cripple becomes hungry for a walk.”

“A child cannot pay for its mother’s milk.”

“The world is like a Mask dancing. If you want to see it well, you do not stand in one place.”

“Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.”