To celebrate the 90th birthday of Nobel Laureate, Prof Wole Soyinka, check out the following quotes attributed to him
One has to confront history honestly.
~Wole Soyinka
I grew up in an atmosphere where words were an integral part of culture.
~Wole Soyinka
The writer is the visionary of his people… He anticipates, he warns
~Wole Soyinka
Books and all forms of writing are terror to those who wish to suppress the truth.”
~Wole Soyinka
No one is rich enough to buy yesterday but if you hustle hard tomorrow could be yours
~Wole Soyinka
But the ultimate lesson is just to sit down and write.That’s all…
~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
And I believe that the best learning process of any kind of craft is just to look at the work of others.
~Wole Soyinka
Art is solace; art is vision and when I pick up a literary work, I am a consumer of literature for its own sake.
~Wole Soyinka
The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism.
~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
Being the first black Nobel laureate, and the first African, the African world considered me personal property. I lost the remaining shreds of my anonymity, even to walk a few yards in London, Paris or Frankfurt without being stopped.
~Wole Soyinka
Writers are human. I shudder to think how I must sometimes appear to others.
~Wole Soyinka
I know there are writers who get up every morning and sit by their typewriter or word processor or pad of paper and wait to write. I don’t function that way. I go through a long period of gestation before I’m even ready to write.
~Wole Soyinka
You cannot live a normal existence if you haven’t taken care of a problem that affects your life and affects the lives of others, values that you hold which in fact define your very existence.
~Wole Soyinka
The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny.
~Wole Soyinka
Don’t take shadows too seriously. Reality is your only safety. Continue to reject illusion..”
~Wole Soyinka
History teaches us to beware of the excitation of the liberated and the injustices that often accompany their righteous thirst for justice..
~Wole Soyinka
I have one abiding religion-human liberty..
~Wole Soyinka
I am a very curious person; I’ll always ask: is this thing true, is it not true?
~Wole Soyinka
