410 Quotes by Chinua Achebe

Democracy is not something you put away for ten years, and then in the 11th year you wake up and start practicing again. We have to begin to learn to rule ourselves again.

If you had been poor in your last life I would have asked you to be rich when you come again. But you were rich. If you had been a coward, I would have asked you to bring courage. But you were a fearless warrior. If you had died young, I would have asked you to get life. But you lived long. So I shall ask you to come again the way you came before.

The only thing we have learnt from experience is that we learn nothing from experience.

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.

In fact, I thought that Christianity was very a good and a very valuable thing for us. But after a while, I began to feel that the story that I was told about this religion wasn't perhaps completely whole, that something was left out.

The lizard that jumped from a high Iroko tree to the ground said he would praise himself if no-one else did.

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

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.

The most awful thing about power is not that it corrupts absolutely but that it makes people so utterly boring, so predictable.