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" Colonialism bred an innate arrogance, but when you undertake that sort of imperial adventure, that arrogance gives way to a feeling of accommodativeness. You take pride in your openness. "

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" Some African leaders actually dare to suggest that democracy is a concept alien to traditional African society. This is one of the most impudent political blasphemies I can think of. "

Wole Soyinka

Society

Democracy

Political

" For me, justice is the prime condition of humanity. "

Wole Soyinka

Condition

Humanity

" I like to say, 'I spend one-third of my time in Nigeria, one-third in Europe or America, and one-third on a plane.' "

" Power is domination, control, and therefore a very selective form of truth which is a lie. "

" I don't really consider myself a novelist, it just came out purely by accident. "

" I am a glutton for tranquility. "

Wole Soyinka

Tranquility

I Am

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

" My father was a schoolteacher, and so I had the advantage of both western educational instruction in the school, as well as what you might call the process of imbibing the traditional processes of education instruction around me. "

Wole Soyinka

Father

Process

" The Lagos of my childhood was a well-laid-out maritime city. "

" The Sudanese government has been playing games with the world, with the Africa Union, in particular, have been playing for time in order to conclude its mission of ethnic cleansing in the Sudan. "

" I think that feeling that if one believed absolutely in any cause, then one must have the confidence, the self-certainty, to go through with that particular course of action. "

" There is something really horrific for any human being who feels he is being consumed by other people. I'm talking about a writer's critics, who don't address what you've written, but want to probe into your existence and magnify the trivia of your life without any sense of humor, without any sense of context. "

" You go to conferences, and your fellow African intellectuals - and even heads of state - they all say: 'Nigeria is a big disappointment. It is the shame of the African continent.' "

" My horizon on humanity is enlarged by reading the writers of poems, seeing a painting, listening to some music, some opera, which has nothing at all to do with a volatile human condition or struggle or whatever. It enriches me as a human being. "

Wole Soyinka

Reading

Music

" Education is lacking in most of those who pontificate. "

" Trading and religion have always been aligned together in the history of the world, and especially on the African continent. "

" See, even despite pious statements to the contrary, much of the industrialized world has not yet come to terms with the recognition of the fallacy of what I call the strong man syndrome. "

" Art is solace; art is vision, and when I pick up a literary work, I am a consumer of literature for its own sake. "

" The Nation of Islam provides an antidote in the United States to fundamentalist Islam - which is why individuals from America have to go abroad to find radical teachings. "

" Well, first of all I'll say that I come alive best in theater. "

" I have a kind of magnetic attraction to situations of violence. "

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

" After the death of the sadistic dictator Gen. Sanni Abacha in 1998, Nigeria underwent a one-year transitional military administration headed by Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar, who uncharacteristically bowed out precisely on the promised date for military disengagement. Did the military truly disengage, however? No. "

" There's a kind of dynamic quality about theater and that dynamic quality expresses itself in relation to, first of all, the environment in which it's being staged; then the audience, the nature of the audience, the quality of the audience. "

" The scales of reckoning with mortality are never evenly weighted, alas, and thus it is on the shoulders of the living that the burden of justice must continue to rest. "

" One has a responsibility to clean up one's space and make it livable as far as one's own resources go. That includes not only material resources, but psychological resources: the commitment of time and a portion of your mind to something when you'd rather be doing something else. "

" But the ultimate lesson is just sit down and write. That's all. "

" I've done a lot of guerrilla theater in my time. "

" We live in a materialist world, and materialism appeals so strongly to humanity, no matter where. "

" Military dictatorship, you can focus on it, you can fight it directly. It's a band of power-driven people. "