Daniel > Daniel's Quotes

“Writing has always been a serious business for me. I felt it was a moral obligation. A major concern of the time was the absence of the African voice. Being part of that dialogue meant not only sitting at the table but effectively telling the African story from an African perspective - in full earshot of the world.”
― Chinua Achebe, There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra

“There is a moral obligation, I think, not to ally oneself with power against the powerless.”
― Chinua Achebe, There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra

“A toad does not run in the daytime for nothing”
― Chinua Achebe

“What kind of power was it if everybody knew that it would never be used? Better to say that it was not there, that it was no more than the power in the anus of the proud dog who tried to put out a furnace with his puny fart.... He turned the yam with a stick.”
― Chinua Achebe, Arrow of God

“And theories are no more than fictions which help us to make sense of experience and which are subject to disconfirmation when their explanations are no longer adequate.”
― Chinua Achebe

“Procrastination is a lazy man's apology.”
― Chinua Achebe, Anthills of the Savannah

“Every generation must recognize and embrace the task it is peculiarly designed by history and by providence to perform.”
― Chinua Achebe, There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra