110+ Wole Soyinka Quotes On Education, Africa And Nigeria

Wole Soyinka is a Nigerian dramatist, poet, and essayist. He was the first African to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986. He is widely considered one of the greatest African writers of all time and is known for his plays such as Death and the King's Horseman and The Lion and the Jewel. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Wole Soyinka on education, leadership, love.

Top 10 Wole Soyinka Quotes

1. The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism.
2. Don't take shadows too seriously. Reality is your only safety. Continue to reject illusion.
3. Be yourself. Ultimately just be yourself.
4. Looking at faces of people, one gets the feeling there's a lot of work to be done.
5. I cannot accept the definition of collective good as articulated by a privileged minority in society, especially when that minority is in power.
6. 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.
7. I am convinced that Nigeria would have been a more highly developed country without the oil. I wished we'd never smelled the fumes of petroleum.
8. The writer is the visionary of his people... He anticipates, he warns.
9. Intolerance has become, I think, the reigning ideology of the world today, the intolerance versus intolerance and it's taken on lethal proportions.
10. The hand that dips into the bottom of the pot will eat the biggest snail.

Wole Soyinka Short Quotes

• The man dies in all those that keep silent.
• Governance can dig itself into a huge hole and not even know it's in there.
• Each time I think Ive created time for myself, along comes a throwback to disrupt my private space.
• As a global citizen, I sometimes feel like denying my identity.
• There's something about the theater which makes my fingertips tingle.
• I have no money to give to you but I have ideas and organizational capacity.
• One thing I can tell you is this, that I am not a methodical writer.
• I grew up in an atmosphere where words were an integral part of culture.
• We live in the real world - we live within a certain history of the plague that has landed on us.
• I believe that each writer must decide in which language he or she is most comfortable.

Wole Soyinka Quotes About Nigeria

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

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

I think the epicentre of terrorism whether you call it cesspit or whatever you want to call it, shift, if you asked me a while ago, I would have said Somalia, Somalia has quietened a bit - and I think the epicentre right now is in Northern Nigeria. — Wole Soyinka

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. — Wole Soyinka

You go to conferences, and your fellow African intellectuals - and even heads of state - they all say: 'Nigeria is a big disappointment. It is the shame of the African continent.' — Wole Soyinka

Wole Soyinka Quotes About Politics

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

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. — Wole Soyinka

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. — Wole Soyinka

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. — Wole Soyinka

Wole Soyinka Quotes About Form

Well, the first thing is that truth and power for me form an antithesis, an antagonism, which will hardly ever be resolved. I can define in fact, can simplify the history of human society, the evolution of human society, as a contest between power and freedom. — Wole Soyinka

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

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. — Wole Soyinka

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. — Wole Soyinka

My definition of slavery is the deprivation of human volition, any form of relationship between two peoples which is based on the deprivation of volition of one side. — Wole Soyinka

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. — Wole Soyinka

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

Wole Soyinka Quotes About Writing

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

Very conscious of the fact that an effort was being made to destroy my mind, because I was deprived of books, deprived of any means of writing, deprived of human companionship. You never know how much you need it until you're deprived of it. — Wole Soyinka

I began writing early - very, very early... I was already writing short stories for the radio and selling poems to poetry and art festivals; I was involved in school plays; I wrote essays, so there was no definite moment when I said, 'Now I'm a writer.' I've always been a writer. — 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

I think I'm a very lazy writer and by that I mean that I do not battle, I don't struggle too hard against it. If I have difficulties in the writing, I just go and do other things. I don't feel a compulsion to write. — Wole Soyinka

There is not a special imposition on writers to be activists. All that does is encourage writers to write propaganda. — Wole Soyinka

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. — Wole Soyinka

My mind immediately shot to South Africa the moment I sat down to think what I was going to write, what I was going to say. There was no other choice. — Wole Soyinka

The problem with literature, with writing, is that it works sometimes in terms of correction of social ills. Other times, it just does not suffice. The proof of that is the ability of a dictator to snuff out the life of a writer. — 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

Wole Soyinka Quotes About Kind

But when you're deprived of it for a lengthy period then you value human companionship. But you have to survive and so you devise all kinds of mental exercises and it's amazing. — 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

There are different kinds of artists and very often, I'll be very frank with you, I wish I were a different kind. — 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

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. — Wole Soyinka

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. — Wole Soyinka

Wole Soyinka Famous Quotes And Sayings

Only 4 sets of people can vote for the PDP: (1) those who are intellectually blind; (2) those who are blinded by ethnicity; (3) those who are blinded by corruption and therefore afraid of the unknown, should power change hands; and finally (4) those who are suffering from a combination of the above terminal sicknesses. — Wole Soyinka

Given the scale of trauma caused by the genocide, Rwanda has indicated that however thin the hope of a community can be, a hero always emerges. Although no one can dare claim that it is now a perfect state, and that no more work is needed, Rwanda has risen from the ashes as a model or truth and reconciliation. — Wole Soyinka

People say human nature is a very vague expression, people tend to say human nature is corruptible anyway and it comes from a theological point of view, goes back to the Garden of Eden, that there is always this corrupt gene waiting to be activated that we inherited from the very beginning. I don't believe in that theological excuse. — Wole Soyinka

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. — Wole Soyinka

It is the human potentials that interest me. I travel and everywhere I go I am amazed at the presence of Nigerians. The intelligence, integrity, productivity, initiative. — Wole Soyinka

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? — Wole Soyinka

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

. . . as far as the regime is concerned, well, the play is sheer terror for them. Because they feel, How dare - how dare anybody lift his or her voice in criticism against us? We have the guns. Their level of paranoia and power-drunkenness is unbelievable. — 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

My father used to tell me stories before I fell asleep. When the children would gather, at a certain point, I had a tendency to make up my own elementary variations on stories I had heard, or to invent totally new ones. — Wole Soyinka

We wasted a lot of creative energy in that immediate post colonial era, when there was a struggle between, you know, the Cold War between the capitalism and communism. Many writers just wasted their energy and their talent because they want to be ideologically correct and of course all they produced was propaganda. — Wole Soyinka

I think that feeling that if one believed absolutely in any cause, then one must have the confidence, the self-certainty, to go through with that particular course of action. — 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

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. — Wole Soyinka

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. — 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

No man beholds his mother's womb Yet who denies it's there? Coiled To the navel of the world is that Endless cord that links us all To the great Origin. If I lose my way. The trailing cord will bring me to the roots. — 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

My interest in culture generally is a comparative one, and I think that's where the word joy, I think, can be applicable. There's joy in actually seeing the relatedness, the connectedness of different cultures or recognising, for instance, your own culture in another or another culture in your own culture and feeling an air to all of them. — Wole Soyinka

When you fight corruption, corruption strikes back and that is the truth because when you fight corruption, you get confidence and when it gets to impunity, then it gets aggressive and says, 'oh, so you think you are different? You think you are tough and different?' This is why some of us are almost permanently in the libel court. — 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

What I teach is literary criticism and comparative literature and so on and that's my function, but from time to time it's possible for me actually to help a writer. I read something and something strikes me then, I feel I can talk to that writer about it. — Wole Soyinka

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

After the death of the sadistic dictator Gen. Sanni Abacha in 1998, Nigeria underwent a one-year transitional military administration headed by Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar, who uncharacteristically bowed out precisely on the promised date for military disengagement. Did the military truly disengage, however? No. — Wole Soyinka

To achieve any change in the minds of the youth, there must be reorientation in terms of materialistic tendencies, corruption and crime generally. — Wole Soyinka

I think most writers would like a quiet space, complete isolation, in which they control their own time. Spaces of creativity in which there's very little interruption. — Wole Soyinka

I know there are other writers who sit down religiously every morning, they take their espresso, they put a clean sheet of paper there and they sit looking at that paper until they've finished or covered at least a number of those pages. No, I'm not like that. I have to be ready. It has to gestate it for quite a while and then it's ready to burst forth. — Wole Soyinka

I think Nigerians got it wrong from independence as people became so conscious of the divisions because we wanted so much to satisfy the plurality of interests. I will say, we neglected the importance of real value, human value and the quality of potential in human beings and we contrived phrases like geographical spread, regional quota, etc and allowed mediocrity to reign. I think that is the problem that we are dealing with till today. — Wole Soyinka

In European and American society, many pundits started to lament the death of literature; looking at youth who were getting more and more attracted to sitcoms - hard, adventure films and said, our children are no longer reading, or else they're reading cartoons. — Wole Soyinka

If man cannot, what god dare claim perfection? — Wole Soyinka

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. — Wole Soyinka

Well, first of all I'll say that I come alive best in theater. — Wole Soyinka

Pity you can't be present during my periodic fault-finding sessions with my image in the mirror! — Wole Soyinka

Under a dictatorship, a nation ceases to exist. All that remains is a fiefdom, a planet of slaves regimented by aliens from outer-space. — Wole Soyinka

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

One, a mass movement from within, which, as you know, is constantly being put down brutally but which, again, regroups and moves forward as is happening right now as we are speaking. — Wole Soyinka

I am a very curious person; I'll always ask: is this thing true, is it not true? And I use my own means to investigate and come to my conclusion. — Wole Soyinka

African film makers are scraping by on a mere pittance. — Wole Soyinka

We all have our individual artistic temperaments as well as partisanships in creative directions. And we have strong opinions on the merits of the products of our occupation. — Wole Soyinka

If you are corrupt and you have extra cash you are able to shut the mouth of your accuser and they will be silenced. — Wole Soyinka

The media owes the responsibility to constantly tell the public the truth. — Wole Soyinka

Well, some people say I'm pessimistic because I recognize the eternal cycle of evil. All I say is, look at the history of mankind right up to this moment and what do you find? — Wole Soyinka

Sadness is twilight's kiss on earth. — Wole Soyinka

The British inclined more towards the feudal mentality, the feudal structures rather than the more radical progressive elements who would re-shape society and institute pretty egalitarian systems of governance with opportunity for even disadvantaged people and so I found that decolonisation was not just the end of political struggle in Nigeria. — Wole Soyinka

I grew up with a very strong sense of what is just and what is not or, to put it this way, I grew up with a keen sense of a division, the reality of a division of perception in people's lives between those who govern and those who govern. — Wole Soyinka

As you get drawn more and more into other activities, like political activities, very demanding, you have to find different rhythms of writing; I think that's the word I'm looking for, rhythms of creativity which then, of course, become very intense. I think your writing then tends to be very intensified simply because there are other demands which seem equally important. — Wole Soyinka

I am a glutton for tranquility. — Wole Soyinka

You accept whoever you are interacting with, directly, or indirectly. — Wole Soyinka

A human feast is an indifferent morsel to a god. — Wole Soyinka

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. — Wole Soyinka

We do not ask the mountain's aid to crack a walnut. — Wole Soyinka

The media must be used effectively to reach the masses. You have to find a new language in which to address the people and demonstrate what is possible. — Wole Soyinka

I never hesitated, as a student, in embracing the necessity of violence. In South Africa, I didn't just accept it; I looked forward to it as a mission. — Wole Soyinka

For me, justice is the prime condition of humanity. — Wole Soyinka

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

I am disturbed for instance when I read that a candidate said, 'I will not probe anybody or something like that'. You don't fight corruption by sweeping everything under the carpet, you don't. — Wole Soyinka

Society itself is responsible for the degradation. — Wole Soyinka

I said: "A tiger does not proclaim his tigritude, he pounces". In other words: a tiger does not stand in the forest and say: "I am a tiger". When you pass where the tiger has walked before, you see the skeleton of the duiker, you know that some tigritude has been emanated there. — Wole Soyinka

I consider the process of gestation just as important as when you're actually sitting down putting words to the paper. — Wole Soyinka

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. — Wole Soyinka

A tiger does not proclaim his tigritude, he pounces. — Wole Soyinka

I do not believe that it is necessarily the duty of the writer to give a voice to his community. If a writer is true to his vocation, to his or her vocation, the very process of creativity enlarges these human horizons. It provides insights, even when you're not writing, when your writing's not dealing with a concrete political situation. — Wole Soyinka

The very function of creativity, of the elaboration of the human condition only enlarges the human spirit and, I mean, as a writer I don't want to read political literature all the time. It would be terribly boring and, you know, abrasive, but just reading the insights, you know, partaking of the insights of a writer into phenomena, into society, into human relationships, both on a micro level and on a macro level, is already a function. — Wole Soyinka

We live in a materialist world, and materialism appeals so strongly to humanity, no matter where. — Wole Soyinka

I happen to be unfortunately temperamental. No, my temperament is also, what you describe to rainfalls, the will of society, to combat a number of contradictions. That happens to be my creative temperament. — Wole Soyinka

Some of us – poets are not exactly poets. We live sometimes – beyond the word. — Wole Soyinka

There's a lot of insincerity about the actions of our legislators; they create distractions - like this anti-gay law you alluded to - and try to mobilise, to exacerbate people's emotions. Until the legislators started making laws, people minded, generally, their own business. — Wole Soyinka

Well, I think the Yoruba gods are truthful. Truthful in the sense that i consider religion and the construct of deities simply an extension of human qualities taken, if you like, to the nth degree. i mistrust gods who become so separated from humanity that enormous crimes can be committed in their names. i prefer gods who can be brought down to earth and judged, if you like. — Wole Soyinka

Suddenly the world has run amok and left you alone and sane behind — Wole Soyinka

Life Lessons by Wole Soyinka

1. Wole Soyinka's work emphasizes the importance of standing up for what is right and fighting for justice, no matter the cost.
2. He also highlights the power of storytelling and art to bring about social change and inspire hope in the face of adversity.
3. Soyinka's plays often explore the complexities of identity, particularly in the context of colonialism and post-colonialism, and the importance of understanding and celebrating our differences.