410 Quotes by Chinua Achebe

A toad does not run in the daytime for nothing.

At the end of the thirty-month war Biafra was a vast smoldering rubble. The head count at the end of the war was perhaps three million dead, which was approximately 20 percent of the entire population.

A proud heart can survive a general failure because such a failure does not prick its pride.

People say that if you find water rising up to your ankle, that’s the time to do something about it, not when it’s around your neck.

A fox must be chased away first; after that the hen might be warned against wandering into the bush.

A person who has not secured a place on the floor should not begin to look for a mat.

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.

He who fights for a ne’er-do-well has nothing to show for it except a head covered in earth and grime.

Real tragedy is never resolved. It goes on hopelessly forever. Conventional tragedy is too easy. The hero dies and we feel a purging of the emotions. A real tragedy takes place in a corner, in an untidy spot, to quote W. H. Auden. The rest of the world is unaware of it.