Wole Soyinka Quotes

25 Sourced Quotes

Books and all forms of writing have always been objects of terror to those who seek to suppress truth.

Wole Soyinka
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.

Wole Soyinka
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.

Wole Soyinka
You think you've stamped it all out but it's always lurking under the surface somewhere.

Wole Soyinka
No man beholds his mother's womb Yet who denies it's there? Coiled To the navel of the world is that Endless cord that links us all To the great Origin. If I lose my way. The trailing cord will bring me to the roots.

Wole Soyinka
Under a dictatorship, a nation ceases to exist. All that remains is a fiefdom, a planet of slaves regimented by aliens from outer-space.

Wole Soyinka
Every act of racial terror, with its vastly increasing sophistication of style and escalation in human loss, is itself an acknowledgement of improved knowledge and respect for the potential of what is feared, an acknowledgement of the sharpening tempo of triumph by the victimized.

Wole Soyinka
Child, your hand is pure as sorrow
Free me of the endless burden,
Let this gourd, let this gourd
Break, beyond my hearth.

Wole Soyinka
I cannot accept the definition of collective good as articulated by a privileged minority in society, especially when that minority is in power.

Wole Soyinka
The artist has always functioned in African society, as the record of the mores and experiences of his society and as the voice of vision in his own time. It is time for him to respond to this essence of himself.

Wole Soyinka
Suddenly the world has run amok and left you alone and sane behind

Wole Soyinka
The sprawling, undulating terrain is all of Ake. More than mere loyalty to the parsonage gave birth to a puzzle, and a resentment, that God should choose to look down on his own pious station, the parsonage compound, from the profane heights of Itoko.

Wole Soyinka
But the skin of progress
Masks, unknown, the spotted wolf of sameness.

Wole Soyinka
Romance is the sweetening of the soul With fragrance offered by the stricken heart.

Wole Soyinka
For me, justice is the first condition of humanity.

Wole Soyinka
History teaches us to beware of the excitation of the liberated and the injustices that often accompany their righteous thirst for justice.

Wole Soyinka
Don't take shadows too seriously. Reality is your only safety. Continue to reject illusion.

Wole Soyinka
Some of us – poets are not exactly poets. We live sometimes – beyond the word.

Wole Soyinka
Life has an end. A life that will outlive
Fame and friendship begs another name.

Wole Soyinka
The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny.

Wole Soyinka
Prison is only a new stage from which the struggle must be waged... prison, especially political prison is an artificial erection in more senses than one whose bluff must be called and whose impotence must be demonstrated.

Wole Soyinka
Well, some people say I'm pessimistic because I recognize the eternal cycle of evil. All I say is, look at the history of mankind right up to this moment and what do you find?

Wole Soyinka
I do not seek; I find. Let actions alone be the manifestations of the authentic being in defence of its authentic visions. History is too full of failed prometheans bathing their wounded spirits in the tragic stream.

Wole Soyinka
The 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.

Wole Soyinka
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?

Wole Soyinka