Wole Soyinka Quotes

Be yourself. Ultimately just be yourself.

There is only one home to the life of a river-mussel; there is only one home to the life of a tortoise; there is only one shell to the soul of man: there is only one world to the spirit of our race. If that world leaves its course and smashes on boulders of the great void, whose world will give us shelter?

We live in the real world - we live within a certain history of the plague that has landed on us.

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

I come alive when I have assisted in bringing out the printed word on the stage, you know, and I enjoy directing plays. It's a tactile process, theatre, unlike a number of other forms of the creative work.

Everybody knows that fraternities are a normal culture in all colleges. It exists in all colleges. President Clinton was a member of a fraternity. In fact, anybody who goes to College in the United States is a member of a College fraternity. There is absolutely nothing evil or occultic about fraternity.

Writers - human. I shudder to think how I must sometimes appear to others.

You have the entire gamut of human experience captured in the mythology of the Yoruba. This is what makes the Yoruba mythology a natural source material for me in my creative endeavours.

The arrogant elimination of the Djaouts of our world must nerve us to pursue our own combative doctrine, namely: that peaceful cohabitation on this planet demands that while the upholders of any creed are free to adopt their own existential absolutes, the right of others to do the same is thereby rendered implicit and sacrosanct. Thus the creed of inquiry, of knowledge and exchange of ideas, must be upheld as an absolute, as ancient and eternal as any other.

Let's say there are prospects for a new Nigeria, but I don't think we have a new Nigeria yet.

Intolerance has always been with us, you know. The moment you have ideology, we have intolerance, whether it's the secular ideology or, you know ideocratic ideology, which always brings with it some kind of intolerance.

I cannot accept the definition of collective good as articulated by a privileged minority in society, especially when that minority is in power.

But the ultimate lesson is just sit down and write. That's all.

For many playwrights, they write the plays anyway because they've got to be, the work has been started, it's got to be finished, but we all long, I think, to see the plays fleshed out on stage and I'm exactly like that. Yes, I'm not satisfied until I actually see it on stage.

Culture is a matrix of infinite possibilities and choices. From within the same culture matrix we can extract arguments and strategies for the degradation and ennoblement of our species, for its enslavement or liberation, for the suppression of its productive potential or its enhancement.

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

When I was a child, for a public/civil servant to be caught in corrupt practices, that individual will be a pariah. He will be a complete reject of the society; he/she could not raise his or her voice to speak in the public. So what happened between that time and now? That time when a public officer, prison or customs officer caught in corruption hides his face in shame amongst his peers, he just couldn't come out publicly. Today, when they come back, they get chieftaincy titles, they are received in grand style, cows are killed, they ride on white horses.

As I grew older and more mature, I've been able to move beyond the immediate response of violence to a projection of the pragmatic, political consequences of that violence. So it's an effort to attain equilibrium.

I never know who's influencing me at any time. I mean, I can take a play by Brecht and adapt it, I'm consciously adapting that play, or, as I've done with the Greek classics, Euripides and Oedipus, and I'm consciously adapting that play. Whether it influences me or not, I think it's the critics, the analysts who have to decide that. Me, I don't feel that I'm under the influence of any such sources.

Writers who open up horizons for other people are performing a function every bit as important as a consciously politicized writer.

The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism.

The novel, for me, was an accident. I really don't consider myself a novelist.

Even when I'm writing plays I enjoy having company and mentally I think of that company as the company I'm writing for.

Mythology can be used, and has been used, even to re-state, you know, the very urgent problems of the world.

Sadly however, I discovered in one particular case that a colleague went and paid the bribe on my behalf, just to get our mission fulfilled. That was painful, and it strained our friendship.

The idea of having to make constant reference to politics is anathema to my calling as a writer.

The Egba kingdom was one of the very last to be ceded to the British protectorate. It remained almost an independent entity within what is now known as Nigeria, simply because of its own traditional structure of governance.

Society itself is responsible for the degradation.

When I tried to create a new political party, which I stressed that this is not my party. I believe very much that there has to be a revolution and this is a party for the young.

And gradually they're beginning to recognize the fact that there's nothing more secure than a democratic, accountable, and participatory form of government. But it's sunk in only theoretically, it has not yet sunk in completely in practical terms.

I have no money to give to you but I have ideas and organizational capacity.

Intolerance has become, I think, the reigning ideology of the world today, the intolerance versus intolerance and it's taken on lethal proportions.

Colonialism bred an innate arrogance, but when you undertake that sort of imperial adventure, that arrogance gives way to a feeling of accommodativeness. You take pride in your openness.

Arts and the Sciences are a natural symbiosis. They stem from the same human existential impulse - exploration. Exploration of what lies beneath the surface, and re-confuguration of elements of what we call reality.

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

When you are looking for corruption, you should look at the entire stratum of the society, while some forms of corruption are direct, others are indirect.

When you start a political party, you are creating space for yourself. So many people were shocked when they realized that I was serious and had no interest in occupying any political position, so they started to fall out one by one.

I tend to work best as a one-man Task Force, including even the roles of messenger, coffee maker and office cleaner.

Next to the commodities of corruption, and religion, however, Nigeria is the world capital of rumour mongering.

There is something really horrific for any human being who feels he is being consumed by other people.

The gods in Yoruba mythology are not remote at all. They're benign, they're malign, they are mischievous, like Eshu for instance, tricksters, rascally, fornicators, that's a similarity to Greek mythology, for instance, you know. They're not saints, they're not saints. They're powerful. It's why they're not tyrannical. Of course, a number of them are also very, you know, benevolent, you know, there are saintly virtues to be found in them.

Religion has really spawned some monsters. It always has, historically. Go all the way back to the Inquisition, you know, the Crusades, the Jehad and so on.

It is not fair to those who fight corruption that they have to fight the aggressiveness, the impunity of the corrupt.

Don't feel that you have to tailor your literature a particular way to please any school of ideology. There will emerge in its own right, effortlessly, some kind of ideological direction which is a reflection of your thinking and you want your thinking, above all.

When a leader encourages the culture of impunity, the society is lost and it makes the work harder for the rest of us.

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

If I were sure I would pass the physicals, I would be on the next space shuttle to Mars or some other planet. I'll leave the calculations and the navigational tasks to you while I bask in your ingenuity. Find me a place in the capsule and watch me outdo Michael Jackson's moonwalk to the music of the spheres.

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.