Chinua Achebe Quotes

122 Sourced Quotes

Art is man's constant effort to create for himself a different order of reality from that which is given to him.

Chinua Achebe
When a mad man walks naked, it is his kinsmen who feel shame, not himself.

Chinua Achebe
No matter how prosperous a man was, if he was unable to rule his women and his children (and especially his women) he was not really a man.

Chinua Achebe
An artist in my view is always afraid of extremists; he is always afraid of those who claim to have found the ultimate solution to any question.

Chinua Achebe
The world is large, said Okonkwo. I have even heard that in some tribes a man's children belong to his wife and her family. That cannot be, said Machi. You might as well say that the woman lies on top of the man when they are making the babies.

Chinua Achebe
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.

Chinua Achebe
[Would] a sensible man spit out the juicy morsel that good fortune put in his mouth?

Chinua Achebe
"When did you become a shivering old woman," Okonkwo asked himself, "you, who are known in all the nine villages for your valor in war? How can a man who has killed five men in battle fall to pieces because he has added a boy to their number? Okonkwo, you have become a woman indeed."

Chinua Achebe
Every lizard lies on its belly, so we cannot tell which has a belly-ache

Chinua Achebe
"Beware Okonkwo!" she warned. "Beware of exchanging words with Agbala. Does a man speak when a god speaks? Beware!"

Chinua Achebe
In such a regime, I say, you died a good death if your life had inspired someone to come forward and shoot your murderer in the chest—without asking to be paid.

Chinua Achebe
A boy sent by his father to steal does not go stealthily but breaks the door with his feet.

Chinua Achebe
When mother-cow is chewing grass its young ones watch its mouth

Chinua Achebe
I believe in the complexity of the human story.

Chinua Achebe
Ibadan was, in retrospect, a great institution. In a way, it revealed the paradox of the colonial situation, because this university college was founded towards the end of British colonial rule in Nigeria. If they did any good things, Ibadan was one of them.

Chinua Achebe
At the most one could say that his chi or... personal god was good. But the Ibo people have a proverb that when a man says yes his chi says yes also. Okonkwo said yes very strongly; so his chi agreed.

Chinua Achebe
In America there is really very little knowledge of the literature of the rest of the world. Of the literature of Latin America, yes, But that's not all that different in inspiration from that of America, or of Europe. One must go further. You don't even have to go too far in terms of geography - you can start with the Native Americans and listen to their poetry.

Chinua Achebe
Okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond.

Chinua Achebe
When a new saying gets to the land of empty men, they lose their heads over it.

Chinua Achebe
A coward may cover the ground with his words but when the time comes to fight he runs away.

Chinua Achebe
It is as though the ancestors who made language and knew from what bestiality its use rescued them are saying to us: Beware of interfering with its purpose! For when language is seriously interfered with, when it is disjoined from truth, be it from mere incompetence or worse, from malice, horrors can descend again on mankind.

Chinua Achebe
The singer should sing well even if it is merely to himself, rather than dance badly for the whole world.

Chinua Achebe
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.

Chinua Achebe
Real tragedy is never resolved. It goes on hopelessly forever. Conventional tragedy is too easy. The hero dies and we feel a purging of the emotions. A real tragedy takes place in a corner, in an untidy spot, to quote W. H. Auden.

Chinua Achebe
A man who calls his kinsmen to a feast does not do so to save them from starving. They all have food in their own homes. When we gather together in the moonlit village ground it is not because of the moon. Every man can see it in his own compound. We come together because it is good for kinsmen to do so.

Chinua Achebe