A functioning, robust democracy requires a healthy educated, participatory followership, and an educated, morally grounded leadership.

I don’t care about age very much.

The price a world language must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of use. The African writer should aim to use English in a way that brings out his message best...

When the British came to Ibo land, for instance, at the beginning of the 20th century, and defeated the men in pitched battles in different places, and set up their administrations, the men surrendered. And...

The foreign correspondent is frequently the only means of getting an important story told, or of drawing the world’s attention to disasters in the making or being covered up. Such an important role is risky...

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

Stories serve the purpose of consolidating whatever gains people or their leaders have made or imagine they have made in their existing journey thorough the world.

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...

Presidents do not go off on leave without telling the country.

When the moon is shining the cripple becomes hungry for a walk

An artist, in my understanding of the word, should side with the people against the Emperor that oppresses his or her people.

Age was respected among his people, but achievement was revered. As the elders said, if a child washed his hands he could eat with kings.

One of the truest tests of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised.

The most important thing about myself is that my life has been full of changes. Therefore, when I observe the world, I don’t expect to see it just like I was seeing the fellow who...

I’ve had trouble now and again in Nigeria because I have spoken up about the mistreatment of factions in the country because of difference in religion. These are things we should put behind us.

Many writers can’t make a living. So to be able to teach how to write is valuable to them. But I don’t really know about its value to the student. I don’t mean it’s useless....

Every generation must recognize and embrace the task it is peculiarly designed by history and by providence to perform.

When I began going to school and learned to read, I encountered stories of other people and other lands.

I feel that there has to be a purpose to what we do. If there was no hope at all, we should just sleep or drink and wait for death. But we don’t want to...

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.

I liked Yeats! That wild Irishman. I really loved his love of language, his flow. His chaotic ideas seemed to me just the right thing for a poet. Passion! He was always on the right...

A man who makes trouble for others is also making trouble for himself.

People go to Africa and confirm what they already have in their heads and so they fail to see what is there in front of them. This is what people have come to expect. It’s...

A man who pays respect to the great paves the way for his own greatness

The relationship with my people, the Nigerian people, is very good. My relationship with the rulers has always been problematic.

Most writers who are beginners, if they are honest with themselves, will admit that they are praying for a readership as they begin to write. But it should be the quality of the craft not...

The whole idea of a stereotype is to simplify. Instead of going through the problem of all this great diversity – that it’s this or maybe that – you have just one large statement; it...

I was a supporter of the desire, in my section of Nigeria, to leave the federation because it was treated very badly with something that was called genocide in those days.

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

What’s important is that we recognize the falsehood of the notion that the Third World should be abandoned because it’s a waste of time.

While we do our good works let us not forget that the real solution lies in a world in which charity will have become unnecessary.

They have not always elected the best leaders, particularly after a long period in which they have not used this facility of free election. You tend to lose the habit.

Charity . . . is the opium of the privileged.

The last four or five hundred years of European contact with Africa produced a body of literature that presented Africa in a very bad light and Africans in very lurid terms. The reason for this...

The people you see in Nigeria today have always lived as neighbors in the same space for as long as we can remember. So it’s a matter of settling down, lowering the rhetoric, the level...

Nigera is what it is because its leaders are not what they should be.

Nigerians are what they are because their leaders are not what they should be

As our fathers said, you can tell a ripe corn by its look.

I don’t care about age very much. I think back to the old people I knew when I was growing up, and they always seemed larger than life.

When old people speak it is not because of the sweetness of words in our mouths; it is because we see something which you do not see.

I think an artist, in my definition of that word, would not be someone who takes sides with the emperor against his powerless subjects. That’s different from prescribing a way in which a writer should...

Mr. Brown had thought of nothing but numbers. He should have known that the kingdom of God did not depend on large crowds. Our Lord Himself stressed the importance of fewness. Narrow is the way...

The problem with leaderless uprisings taking over is that you don’t always know what you get at the other end. If you are not careful you could replace a bad government with one much worse!

It is the story that owns and directs us. It is the thing that makes us different from cattle; it is the mark on the face that sets one people apart from their neighbors.

Unoka went into an inner room and soon returned with a small wooden disc containing a kola nut, some alligator pepper and a lump of white chalk. “I have kola,” he announced when he sat...

Nigeria has had a complicated colonial history. My work has examined that part of our story extensively.

The damage done in one year can sometimes take ten or twenty years to repair.

I’m a practised writer now. But when I began, I had no idea what this was going to be. I just knew that there was something inside me that wanted me to tell who I...

Storytellers are a threat. They threaten all champions of control, they frighten usurpers of the right-to-freedom of the human spirit — in state, in church or mosque, in party congress, in the university or wherever.

Oh, the most important thing about myself is that my life has been full of changes. Therefore, when I observe the world, I don’t expect to see it just like I was seeing the fellow...