To me, being an intellectual doesn’t mean knowing about intellectual issues; it means taking pleasure in them.
Africa is people” may seem too simple and too obvious to some of us. But I have found in the course of my travels through the world that the most simple things can still givwe us a lot of trouble, even the brightest among us: this is particularly so in matters concerning Africa.
There is that great proverb – that until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.
We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own. The Igbo, always practical, put it concretely in their proverb Onye ji onye n’ani ji onwe ya: ‘He who will hold another down in the mud must stay in the mud to keep him down.’
Nobody can teach me who I am. You can describe parts of me, but who I am – and what I need – is something I have to find out myself.
In dealing with a man who thinks you are a fool, it is good sometimes to remind him that you know what he knows but have chosen to appear foolish for the sake of peace.
There is no story that is not true.
Dancing is very important nowadays. No girl will look at you if you can’t dance.
The damage done in one year can sometimes take ten or twenty years to repair.
The impatient idealist says: ‘Give me a place to stand and I shall move the earth.’ But such a place does not exist. We all have to stand on the earth itself and go with her at her pace.
Privilege, you see, is one of the great adversaries of the imagination; it spreads a thick layer of adipose tissue over our sensitivity.