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Wole Soyinka

Nobel laureate Nigerian writer

Akinwande Oluwole Soyinka (born 13 July 1934) is a Nigerian playwright, poet, novelist, essayist and pro-democracy activist. In 1986 he became the first African winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Wole Soyinka in 2008

Quotes

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  • I said: "A tiger does not proclaim his tigritude, he pounces". In other words: a tiger does not stand in the forest and say: "I am a tiger". When you pass where the tiger has walked before, you see the skeleton of the duiker, you know that some tigritude has been emanated there.
    • Janheinz Jahn (trans. Oliver Coburn and Ursula Lehrburger) A History of Neo-African Literature (London: Faber, 1968) pp. 265-6.
    • Explaining, in Berlin in 1964, a criticism of the concept of négritude he had made at a conference in Kampala in 1962.
  • The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny.
    • The Man Died (New York: Harper & Row, 1972) p. 13.
  • There is only one home to the life of a river-mussel; there is only one home to the life of a tortoise; there is only one shell to the soul of man: there is only one world to the spirit of our race. If that world leaves its course and smashes on boulders of the great void, whose world will give us shelter?
  • [T]he PDP, on whose platform he stands, represents the most harrowing of this nation’s nightmares over and beyond even the horrors of the Abacha regime. If he wishes to be considered on his own merit, now is time for him, as well as others similarly enmeshed, to exercise the moral courage that goes with his repudiation of that party, a dissociation from its past, and a pledge to reverse its menacing future. We shall find him an alternative platform on which to stand, and then have him present his credentials along those of other candidates engaged in forging a credible opposition alliance.
    • Sahara Reporters[1]
  • "Come January 20, 2017; watch my WOLEXIT" [2] [3]
  • England is a cesspit. England is the breeding ground of fundamentalist Muslims. Its social logic is to allow all religions to preach openly. But this is illogic, because none of the other religions preach apocalyptic violence. And yet England allows it. Remember, that country was the breeding ground for communism, too. Karl Marx did all his work in libraries there....We should assemble all those who are pure and cannot abide other faiths, put them all in rockets, and fire them into space.....A virus has attacked the world of sense and sensibility, and it has spread to Nigeria....The assumption of power over life and death then passed to every single inconsequential Muslim in the world-as if someone had given them a new stature...Al Qaeda is the descendent of this phenomenon. The proselytization of Islam became vigorous after this. People went to Saudi Arabia. Madrassas were established everywhere.
  • The greatest threat to freedom is the absencee of criticism.
    • The strong man syndrome [4]
  • the contemporary novel . . . I've read one or two: Rushdie, I've enjoyed, again, exceptionally, Marquez, I love his works: that's another exception. Bessie Head: I found her novels very, very gripping, fascinating, challenging, really intellectually intriguing. Then that black American woman writer, Toni Morrison, the author of Sula, Song of Solomon: she's a fascinating writer. Umberto Eco . . . But generally I don't read novels.
    • in Talking with African Writers by Jane Wilkinson (1992)

The Lion and the Jewel (1959)

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  • Sidi feels empowered by seeing her beauty for the first time in the magazine prints. She recognizes that her beauty is a commodity, allowing her agency to make a future for herself. This is a novel idea: choosing one's own future is reserved for men.
  • It is five full months since last / I took a wife
  • The greedy dog! Insatiate camel of a foolish, doting race.
  • How often must I tell you, Sidi, that / A grown-up girl must cover up her... / Her... shoulders? I can see quite... quite / A good portion of—that!
  • (Lakunle, 2)
  • What I boast is known in Lagos, that city / Of magic, in Badagry where Saro women bathe / In gold, even in smaller towns less than / Twelve miles from here...
  • (Lakunle, 5)
  • Bush-girl you are, bush girl you'll always be; / Uncivilized and primitive—bush-girl!
  • (Lakunle, 9)
  • My Ruth, my Rachel, Esther, Bathsheba / Thou sum of fabled perfections / From Genesis to Revelations
  • (Lakunle, 20)
  • Sadiku, I am young and brimming; he is spent. / I am the twinkle of a jewel / But he is the hind-quarters of a lion!
  • (Sidi, 23)
  • No! I do not envy him! / Just one woman for me!
  • (Lakunle, 26)
  • To husband his wives surely ought to be / A man's first duties—at all times.
  • (Sidi, 47)
  • I do not hate progress, only its nature / Which makes all roofs and faces look the same.
  • (Baroka, 52)
  • Moreover, I will admit, / It solves the problem of her bride-price too. / A man must live or fall by his true / Principles. That, I had sworn, / Never to pay.
  • (Lakunle, 61)
  • Lakunle, last seen, having freed himself of Sadiku, clearing a space for the young girl.
  • (Soyinka, 64)

A Dance of the Forests (1960)

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  • The accumulated heritage—that is what we are celebrating. Mali. Chaka. Songhai. Glory. Empires.
    • Part 1, Page 8
  • I see we’ve got another of the good old days. Obaneji [on the contrary].
    • Rola Part 1, Page 6
  • Will you take my case?
    • Part 1, Page 3
  • When you see a man hurrying, he has got a load on his back. Do you think I live emptily that I will take another's cause for pay or mercy?
    • Part 1
  • The world is big, but the dead are bigger
    • The dead woman, part one
  • This whole family business sickens me. Let everybody lead their own lives,"
    • Rola, part one
  • These rites of the dead. I do not know why you take them on,"
    • Murete, part one
  • Aroni has taken control. That is when the guilty become afraid.
    • Part one
  • Adenebi becomes defensive and says, "Have you no feeling for those who died?"
    • Part one
  • "Why don't you confess it? You are the type who would rather die in your bed."
    • Rola,vPart two
  • "I have a particular aversion to being mauled by women
    • Obanije, part two
  • Recognition is the curse I carry with me.
    • Obanije, part two
  • Doesn't she look like the type that would drive men to madness and self-destruction?
    • Obanije, part two
  • When your businessmen ruin the lesser ones, do you go crying to them?"
    • Rola part two
  • The guests we were sent are slaves and lackeys. They have only come to undermine our strength. To preach to us how ignoble we are.
    • Part two
  • The descendants of our great forebears...let them symbolize all that is noble in our nation."
    • Adebebi Part two

Kongi's Harvest (1965)

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  • A King does not become a menial just because he puts down his crown to eat.
  • A shilling's vegetable must appease a halfpenny spice.
  • The nude shanks of a king is not a sight for children - it will blind them.
  • It was our fathers who said, not I - a crown is a burden when the king visits his favourite's chambers. When the king's wrapper falls off in audience, wise men know he wants to be left alone.
  • It is a mindless clown who dispenses thanks as a fowl scatters meal not caring where it falls.
  • Only a foolish child lets a father prostrate to him.
  • We lift the King's umbrella higher than men but it never pushes the sun in the face.
  • The ostrich also sports plumes but I've yet to see that wise bird leave the ground.
  • When the dog hides a bone does he not throw up sand?
  • Age has shrunk the tortoise and the shell is full of air pockets.
  • When a squirrel seeks sanctuary up the iroko tree the hunter's chase is ended.
  • If the young sapling bends, the old twig if it resists the wind, can only break.
  • It's a foolish elder who becomes a creditor, since he must wait until the other world, or outlive his debtors.

The Road (1965)

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  • You say you get pride and you are still a conductor on a bolekaja.
  • Nonsense, we run a bus. The seats face where you are going
  • Do you take me for a common gawper after misery?... My bed is among the dead, and when the road rises a victory cry to break my sleep I hurry to a disgruntled swam of souls full of spite for their rejected bodies
  • ...There are dangers in the Quest I know, but the Word may be found companion not to life, but Death.
  • God rot your coward bones! Do you think not enough people die here that you must come and threaten me with death. You spurious spew. You instrument of mortgage. You unlicensed appendage of the steering wheel...

Madmen and Specialists (1970)

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  • It’s my life that’s gone into his. I haven’t burrowed so deep to cast good earth onto worthless seeds….
  • Power comes from bending Nature to your will.
  • What is one flesh from another? So I tried it again, just to be sure of myself. It was the first step to power, you understand. Power in its purest sense. The end of inhibitions. The conquest of weakness of your too human flesh with all its sentiment.

The Man Died (1972)

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  • Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't going away
    • This quote illustrates the inevitable nature of truth
  • For me, justice is the first condition of humanity.
    • Soyinka emphasizes the fundamental importance of justice in society​
  • The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism
    • This quote highlights the crucial role of criticism in maintaining freedom
  • I have always held the view that when you have that situation, you must refuse to be part of it
    • This quote speaks to the importance of personal integrity and resistance
  • A tiger doesn't proclaim his tigritude, he pounces
    • Soyinka uses this analogy to convey the essence of true power and action​.

Death and the King's Horseman (1975)

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Aké: The Years of Childhood (1981)

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  • 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....
  • 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
  • Wild Christian shushed him, but I saw no difference in both their attitudes. I was overwhelmed by only one fact- there was neither justice nor logic in the world of grown-ups
  • It is time to commence the mental shifts for admittance to yet another irrational world of adults and their discipline
  • Change was impossible to predict. A tempo, a mood would have settled over the house, over guests, relations, casual visitors, poor relations, 'cousins,' strays – all recognized within a tangible pattern of feeling – and then it would happen!
    • This quote captures the unpredictability of change in his childhood environment

A Play of Giants (1986)

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  • Man is a bird without wings and a tree without roots.
  • The ground that man walks on, has it not always been there?
  • We are the giants who bestride the world like a colossus, while others are mere mortals.
  • Power is transient, but the deeds of those who wield it can leave an indelible mark on history.
  • Ideas, like everything else, can be corrupted. Power is like that: it pollutes everything it touches.
  • We must remember that the only true giants are those who walk with the people, not over them.

A Dance of the Forests (1960)

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  • Trouble me no further. The fooleries of beings whom I have fashioned closer to me weary and distress me. Yet I must persist, knowing that nothing is ever altered. My secret is my eternal burden—to pierce the encrustations of soul-deadening habit, and bare the mirror of original nakedness—knowing full well, it is all futility.
  • Now what am I thinking of? I must be getting tired. No sensible man burns the house to cook a little yam.
  • When your business men ruin the lesser ones, do you go crying to them? I also have no pity for the one who invested foolishly. Investors, that is all they ever were—to me.
  • What are you? Men have killed for me. Men have died for me. Have you flints in your eye? Fool, have you never lived?"
  • The totem, my final insult. The final taunt from the human pigs.
  • Envy, but not from prowess of his adze.
  • My secret is my eternal burden—to pierce the encrustations of soul-deadening habit, and bare the mirror of original nakedness—knowing full well, it is all futility.

Climate of Fear (2005)

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  • For the fire consumes all but the arsonist.
  • Today, the constituency of fear has become much broader, far less selective.
  • 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?
  • Sadly, it is within the religious domain that the phenomenon of rhetorical hysteria takes its most devastating form....
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • ...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.
  • Everyone is linked, all our actions have ramifications, and music is a teacher of this interconnected reality.
  • 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.
  • 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.

The Strong Breed

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  • There is peace in being a stranger.
  • But then I am a woman. I have a woman’s longings and weaknesses.
  • A village which cannot produce its own carrier contains no men.
  • Ours is a strong breed my son. It is only a strong breed that can take this boat to the river year after year and wax stronger on it. I have taken down each year’s evils for over twenty years. I hoped you would follow me.

Quotes about Soyinka

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  • My themed reading for both flights was Wole Soyinka, anything I had not yet read by the Nigerian novelist, memoirist, poet, and playwright. Because New York City was our final destination, I lingered over a poem of his titled "New York, U.S.A," which had been published more than a decade earlier. "Control was wrested from your pilot's hands,/And yours, mid-Atlantic, hapless voyager./Deafened the engine's last descent/To all but disordered echoes of your feet."
  • I like a writer like Ngugi, who lashes out, because he knows what is good and bad in writing. And I think this is true of Wole Soyinka, too... I admire Soyinka because I think he's continuous, much more continuous, as a writer…Wole Soyinka deserves the Nobel Prize.
    • Buchi Emecheta In Interviews with Writers of the Post-Colonial World edited by Feroza Jussawalla and Reed Way Dasenbrock (1992)
  • What I sensed in Soyinka is that, for the most part, as a middle-aged man he is able to look back on his childhood and still see his early life with that fresh eye.
    • 1982 interview in Conversations with Nadine Gordimer edited by Nancy Topping Bazin and Marilyn Dallman Seymour (1990)
  • Now, the most eloquent irreligious individual voice in Nigeria is our first Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka. Soyinka is an eminent literary scholar. He has consistently argued for tolerance and respect for the humanity of all in the face of religious intolerance and extremism. Soyinka has not minced words in condemning the unconscionable religious gladiators in the region that have often turned the country into a theatre of absurdity and holy wars. He has been consistent in his condemnation of the jihadists and crusaders who often orchestrate religious bloodletting in their quest to implement Sharia law or to further some self-styled divine mandate. While I cannot say for sure how impactful his rational appeals are on policies and programs, Soyinka’s statements are sources of hope and light at times of darkness and despair. I can say for certain that on occasions when religious extremists push the nation to the brink. When religion blinds and people are unable to see or think clearly, when fear and fanaticism loom very large, Soyinka is a voice of rational sanity, thoughtful courage, and moderation.
  • Chinua Achebe was a real education for me, a real education. And certainly the plays of Soyinka and The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born of Ayi Kwei Armah-those things were at that time real, and they're the kinds of books that one can re-read with enormous discoveries subsequently.
    • 1986 interview in Conversations with Toni Morrison edited by Danille K. Taylor-Guthrie (1994)
  • He is remembered in Nigeria with awe, both for a political boldness that landed him in prison and for a commanding intellect that is manifest in every genre he tackles.
    • John Updike Hugging the Shore (New York: Knopf, 1983) pp. 683-4.
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