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The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

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The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Wole Soyinka Quotes

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

I’m not one of those writers I learned about who get up in the morning, put a piece of paper in their typewriter machine and start writing. That I’ve never understood.

– Wole Soyinka

In Africa, those who have money – businessmen and banks – do not believe in film.

– Wole Soyinka

You cannot live a normal existence if you haven’t taken care of a problem that affects your life and affects the lives of others, values that you hold which in fact define your very existence.

– Wole Soyinka

Writers and intellectuals have a duty to humanity. It is to insist that the human entity remains the primary asset in overall development; thus, it must be safeguarded.

– Wole Soyinka

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

There is not a special imposition on writers to be activists. All that does is encourage writers to write propaganda. Propaganda can be written by anybody, including dictators.

– Wole Soyinka

I found, when I left, that there were others who felt the same way. We’d meet, they’d come and seek me out, we’d talk about the future. And I found that their depression and pessimism was every bit as acute as mine.

– Wole Soyinka

I ceased using words like optimism and pessimism a long time ago.

– Wole Soyinka

Each time I think I’ve created time for myself, along comes a throwback to disrupt my private space.

– Wole Soyinka

Rwanda, which is one of the younger independent states in Africa, must be regarded as a model of how great human trauma can be transformed to commence true reconstruction of people. Human trauma can lead to stunted growth and mass withdrawal.

– Wole Soyinka

Looking at faces of people, one gets the feeling there’s a lot of work to be done.

– Wole Soyinka

I cannot belong to a nation which permits such barbarities as stoning to death and amputation – I don’t care what religion it is.

– Wole Soyinka

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.

– Wole Soyinka

The problem with literature, with writing, is that it works sometimes in terms of correction of social ills. Other times, it just does not suffice.

– Wole Soyinka

One, a mass movement from within, which, as you know, is constantly being put down brutally but which, again, regroups and moves forward as is happening right now as we are speaking.

– Wole Soyinka

I’m not fond of biographies. I don’t like writing about myself.

– Wole Soyinka

But theater, because of its nature, both text, images, multimedia effects, has a wider base of communication with an audience. That’s why I call it the most social of the various art forms.

– Wole Soyinka

And I believe that the best learning process of any kind of craft is just to look at the work of others.

– Wole Soyinka

No human is completely fearless.

– Wole Soyinka

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

– Wole Soyinka

When I write plays, I’m already seeing the shapes on stage, of the actors and their interaction, and so on and so forth. I don’t think I’ve ever written one play as an abstract piece, as a literary piece, floating in the air somewhere, to be flushed out later on.

– Wole Soyinka

History teaches us to beware of the excitation of the liberated and the injustices that often accompany their righteous thirst for justice.

– Wole Soyinka

Books and all forms of writing are terror to those who wish to suppress the truth.

– Wole Soyinka

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.

– Wole Soyinka

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

– Wole Soyinka

I’m an Afro-realist. I take what comes, and I do my best to affect what is unacceptable in society.

– Wole Soyinka

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

– Wole Soyinka

Before you’re a writer, you’re a citizen, a human being, and therefore the weapons of the citizen are at your disposal to use or not use.

– Wole Soyinka

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.

– Wole Soyinka

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