Chinua Achebe citations

“Ce qui est bon dans le monde africain traditionnel est mauvais au regard du blanc.”

“Un village n’est pas fait d’une poignée de héros, mais bien d’individus nombreux.”

Citation extraite de Le monde s’effondre ( Things Fall Apart ), paru en 1958.
Citation rapportée

“Un esprit faible reste faible dans sa vieillesse et un esprit fort perd sa vigueur en vieillissant.”

Citation extraite de Le monde s’effondre ( Things Fall Apart ), paru en 1958.
Citation rapportée

“Le châtiment de l’exil doit se dérouler sur la terre maternelle.”

Citation extraite de Le monde s’effondre ( Things Fall Apart ), paru en 1958.
Citation rapportée

“Il n'y a rien à craindre de quelqu'un qui crie”

Citation extraite de Le monde s’effondre ( Things Fall Apart ), paru en 1958.
Citation rapportée

“La vraie supériorité du blanc, ce sont ses larmes.”

Chinua Achebe Citations

“Il est impossible de dissocier les pratiques profanes des pratiques religieuses.”

Citation extraite de Le monde s’effondre ( Things Fall Apart ), paru en 1958.
Citation rapportée

“L’homme instruit prend conscience, à mesure qu’il vieillit, de l’immensité de son ignorance.”

Citation extraite de Le monde s’effondre ( Things Fall Apart ), paru en 1958.
Citation rapportée

“Si un homme est privé de sépulture, le clan est rempli de mauvais esprit qui en veulent aux vivants.”

Citation extraite de Le monde s’effondre ( Things Fall Apart ), paru en 1958.
Citation rapportée

“On ne doit pas mourir pendant la Semaine de paix.”

Citation extraite de Le monde s’effondre ( Things Fall Apart ), paru en 1958.
Citation rapportée

“Nobody can teach me who I am. You can describe parts of me, but who I am - and what I need - is something I have to find out myself.”

Citation extraite de Le monde s’effondre ( Things Fall Apart ), paru en 1958.
Citation rapportée

Chinua Achebe: Citations en anglais

“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.”

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

Chinua Achebe livre Le monde s'effondre

Variante: The world has no end, and what is good among one people is an abomination with others.
Source: Things Fall Apart (1958), Chapter 15 (p. 130)
Contexte: "We have heard stories about white men who make the powerful guns and the strong drinks and took slaves away across the seas, but no one thought the stories were true." [said Obierika]
"There is no story that is not true," said Uchendu. "The world has no end, and what is good among one people is an abomination with others. We have albinos among us. Do you not think that they came to our clan by mistake, that they have strayed from their way to a land where everybody is like them?"

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

“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.”

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

Chinua Achebe livre Le monde s'effondre

Source: Things Fall Apart

“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.”

Chinua Achebe livre Arrow of God

Arrow of God (1988)

“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.”

Chinua Achebe livre Anthills of the Savannah

Source: Anthills of the Savannah

“If you don't like my story, write your own”

Chinua Achebe livre Le monde s'effondre

Source: Things Fall Apart

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

Chinua Achebe livre Le monde s'effondre

Variante: If you don't like someone's story, write your own.
Source: Things Fall Apart

“Nobody can teach me who I am.”

“Writers don't give prescriptions. They give headaches!”

“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.”

Chinua Achebe livre Anthills of the Savannah

Source: Anthills of the Savannah

“People from different parts of the world can respond to the same story if it says something to them about their own history and their own experience.”

“Charity… is the opium of the privileged.”

Source: There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra

“There is no story that is not true.”

Chinua Achebe livre Anthills of the Savannah

Source: Anthills of the Savannah

“My weapon is literature”

Chinua Achebe livre Le monde s'effondre

Source: Things Fall Apart

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

“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.”

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

Variante: When Suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat left for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool.

“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.”

Chinua Achebe livre Le monde s'effondre

Source: Things Fall Apart (1958), Chapter 2 (p. 14)

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

Chinua Achebe livre Anthills of the Savannah

Source: Anthills of the Savannah