Chinua Achebe Quotes

Do not say, "It is morning," and dismiss it with a name of yesterday. See it for the first time as a new-born child that has no name.

Reason is like an officer when the King appears;
The officer then loses his power and hides himself.
Reason is the shadow cast by God; God is the sun.

Life seems to me essentially passion, conflict, rage... It is only intellect that keeps me sane; perhaps this makes me overvalue intellect against feeling.

The quality of your life is the quality of your communication.

The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.

Walter Scott has no business to write novels, especially good ones. It is not fair. He has fame and profit enough as a poet, and should not be taking the bread out of other people's mouths. I do not like him, and do not mean to like Waverley if I can help it, but fear I must.

You can get everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.

It is a lovely night, and they are much to be pitied who have not been taught to feel, in some degree, as you do; who have not, at least, been given a taste for Nature in early life. They lose a great deal.

Without effort and change, human life cannot remain good. It is not a finished Utopia that we ought to desire, but a world where imagination and hope are alive and active.

The tragedy of civil wars in countries like Angola and Mozambique is that they left many civilians maimed. Poverty is the reason HIV/AIDS spread so rapidly in the African townships and slums. Poverty is the real killer.

Nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom.

I can't love you in the dark,
It feels like we're oceans apart.
There is so much space between us,
Baby, we're already defeated.
Ah-yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah, everything changed me.

Hannah: Life could be wonderful if people would leave you alone.

We are never ever ever... getting back together.
We are never ever ever... getting back together.
You go talk to your friends, talk to my friends, talk to me.
But we are never ever ever ever... getting back together.
Like, ever.

For this too is a very pleasant strand woven into the Cynic's pattern of life; he must needs be flogged like an ass, and while he is being flogged he must love the men who flog him, as though he were the father or brother of them all.

I ain't a killer, but don't push me
Revenge is like the sweetest joy next to gettin' pussy.