Quotes by Wole Soyinka

About Wole Soyinka:

Akinwande Oluwole "Wole" Babatunde Soyinka is a Nigerian playwright and poet. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, the first African to be honored in that category.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

No writer has a right to make that much money. Indeed, without diabolical assistance, no writer can.

Wole Soyinka

There's a kind of dynamic quality about theater and that dynamic quality expresses itself in relation to, first of all, the environment in which it's being staged; then the audience, the nature of the audience, the quality of the audience.

Wole Soyinka

Power is domination, control, and therefore a very selective form of truth which is a lie.

Wole Soyinka

I don't know any other way to live but to wake up every day armed with my convictions, not yielding them to the threat of danger and to the power and force of people who might despise me.

Wole Soyinka

Those nations that say it's a crime to preach your religion are making a terrible mistake. All they're doing is driving underground other forms of spiritual intuitions and practices.

Wole Soyinka

There's no way to escape the culture that has evolved, from which we ourselves have evolved. Naturally, we stress it, break it up, reassemble it to suit our own needs. But it is there - a source of vital strength.

Wole Soyinka

Some African leaders actually dare to suggest that democracy is a concept alien to traditional African society. This is one of the most impudent political blasphemies I can think of.

Wole Soyinka

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

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

Wole Soyinka

Books and all forms of writing have always been objects of terror to those who seek to suppress the truth.

Wole Soyinka

Politics, I believe, is a full-time occupation.

Wole Soyinka

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

Wole Soyinka

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

Wole Soyinka

I grew up in an atmosphere where words were an integral part of culture.

Wole Soyinka

The hand that dips into the bottom of the pot will eat the biggest snail.

Wole Soyinka

The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny.

Wole Soyinka

The writer is the visionary of his people... He anticipates, he warns.

Wole Soyinka

See, even despite pious statements to the contrary, much of the industrialized world has not yet come to terms with the recognition of the fallacy of what I call the strong man syndrome.

Wole Soyinka

For me, justice is the prime condition of humanity.

Wole Soyinka

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.

Wole Soyinka

Author Bio

  • NameWole Soyinka
  • DescriptionNigerian writer
  • AliasesAkinwande Oluwole Soyinka
  • BornJuly 13, 1934
  • CountryNigeria
  • ProfessionPlaywright; Poet; Writer; Novelist; Philosopher; Essayist
  • AwardsNobel Prize In Literature