Inspiring Quotes From The Legend Chinua Achebe

Chinua Achebe (born 1930) is one of the foremost Nigerian novelists. His novels are primarily directed to an African audience, but their psychological insights have gained them universal acceptance.
A man of wisdom, honesty and integrity he was respected by all Nigerians. Chinua lived a long and inspiring life showing us that if we put our heart sweat and hard-work in anything we do we will be successful.
And in times where Nigerians look at all the doom and gloom around the country he was a bright light that showed us that we as a nation have a lot of diamonds in the rough

Here are some of his life inspiring quotes

• “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.'
• “If you don't like someone's story, write your own.”
• “To me, being an intellectual doesn't mean knowing about intellectual issues; it means taking pleasure in them.”
• “The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably 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,
• “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.”
• “One of the truest tests of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised.”
• “We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own. The Igbo, always practical, put it concretely in their proverb Onye ji onye n'ani ji onwe ya: "He who will hold another down in the mud must stay in the mud to keep him down.”
• “Charity . . . is the opium of the privileged.”
• “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.”
• “Nobody can teach me who I am.”
• “People create stories create people; or rather stories create people create stories.”
• “My weapon is literature ”
• “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.” ―
• “Mr. Brown had thought of nothing but numbers. He should have known that the kingdom of God did not depend on large crowds. Our Lord Himself stressed the importance of fewness. Narrow is the way and few the number. To fill the Lord's holy temple with an idolatrous crowd clamouring for signs was a folly of everlasting consequence. Our Lord used the whip only once in His life - to drive the crowd away from His church.”
• “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.”
• “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.” ―
• “Oh, the most important thing about me is that my life has been full of changes. Therefore, when I observe the world, I don’t expect to see it just like I was seeing the fellow who lives in the next room. There is this complexity which seems to me to be part of the meaning of existence and everything we value.”
• “...when we are comfortable and inattentive, we run the risk of committing grave injustices absentmindedly.”
• “Writers don't give prescriptions. They give headaches!”
• “When the moon is shining the cripple becomes hungry for a walk”
• “Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness.
• Okonkwo’s fear was greater than these. It was not external but lay deep within himself.”
• “Privilege, you see, is one of the great adversaries of the imagination; it spreads a thick layer of adipose tissue over our sensitivity.”
• “Then listen to me,' he said and cleared his throat. 'It's true that a child belongs to its father. But when a father beats his child, it seeks sympathy in its mother's hut. A man belongs to his fatherland when things are good and life is sweet. But when there is sorrow and bitterness he finds refuge in his motherland. Your mother is there to protect you. She is buried there. And that is why we say that mother is supreme. Is it right that you, Okonkwo, should bring your mother a heavy face and refuse to be comforted? Be careful or you may displease the dead. Your duty is to comfort your wives and children and take them back to your fatherland after seven years. But if you allow sorrow to weigh you down and kill you, they will all die in exile.”
• “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.” ―
• “It is only the story...that saves our progeny from blundering like blind beggars into the spikes of the cactus fence. The story is our escort; without it, we are blind. Does the blind man own his escort? No, neither does the story; rather, it is the story that owns us. ”
• “Do not despair. I know you will not despair. You have a manly and a proud heart. A proud heart can survive a general failure because such a failure does not prick its pride. It is more difficult and bitterer when a man fails alone.”
• “There is no story that is not true.”
• “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.”
• “Unfortunately, oppression does not automatically produce only meaningful struggle. It has the ability to call into being a wide range of responses between partial acceptance and violent rebellion. In between you can have, for instance, a vague, unfocused dissatisfaction; or, worst of all, savage infighting among the oppressed, a fierce love-hate entanglement with one another like crabs inside the fisherman's bucket, which ensures that no crab gets away. This is a serious issue for African-American deliberation.
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• To answer oppression with appropriate resistance requires knowledge of two kinds: in the first place, self-knowledge by the victim, which means awareness that oppression exists, an awareness that the victim has fallen from a great height of glory or promise into the present depths; secondly, the victim must know who the enemy is. He must know his oppressor's real name, not an alias, a pseudonym, or a nom de plume!” ― Chinua Achebe,
• “The impatient idealist says: 'Give me a place to stand and I shall move the earth.' But such a place does not exist. We all have to stand on the earth itself and go with her at her pace.”