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Mr. Brown Had Thought Of Nothing But Numbers. He Should Have Known That The Kingdom Of God Did Not Depend On Large Crowds. Our Lord Himself Stressed The Importance Of Fewness. Narrow Is The Way And Few The Number. To Fill The Lord's Holy Temple With An Idolatrous Crowd Clamoring For Signs Was A Folly Of Everlasting Consequence. Our Lord Used The Whip Only Once In His Life - To Drive The Crowd Away From His Church.

-Chinua Achebe

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Mr. Brown Had Thought

Chinua Achebe

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Mr. Brown Had Thought Of Nothing But Numbers. He Should Have Known That The Kingdom Of God Did Not Depend On Large Crowds. Our Lord Himself Stressed The Importance Of Fewness. Narrow Is The Way And Few The Number. To Fill The Lord's Holy Temple With An Idolatrous Crowd Clamoring For Signs Was A Folly Of Everlasting Consequence. Our Lord Used The Whip Only Once In His Life - To Drive The Crowd Away From His Church.

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People Create Stories Create People; Or Rather Stories Create People Create Stories.

Whatever Music You Beat On Your Drum There Is Somebody Who Can Dance To It.

Those Who Are Talking Sharia In Nigeria Are Really Just Politicians Exploiting What They Think Is Available. But If It Should Turn Out That There Are In Fact Whole Sections Of The Country Which Believe That It Is Legitimate To Chop Off Peoples Hands Because They Stole A Hen - If That Should Really Turn Out To Be The Genuine Belief Of Responsible, Educated People In The North Than I Would Say There Is No Chance. But I Do Not Believe That Is The Case. The Sharia Was Always There But It Was Never Force Onto Non-muslims And It Was Not Ever Applied In The Area Of Criminal Law.

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Art Is Man's Constant Effort To Create For Himself A Different Order Of Reality From That Which Is Given To Him.

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A Man Who Lived On The Banks Of The Niger Should Not Wash His Hands With Spittle.

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There Is Nothing To Fear From Someone Who Shouts.

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I'm Very Primitive; I Write With A Pen.

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This Is Why I Find Racism Impossible, Because This Is Against Humanity.

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Serious And Good Art Has Always Existed To Help, To Serve, Humanity. Not To Indict.

What Is Modesty But Inverted Pride?

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In Fact, I Thought That Christianity Was Very A Good And A Very Valuable Thing For Us. But After A While, I Began To Feel That The Story That I Was Told About This Religion Wasn't Perhaps Completely Whole, That Something Was Left Out.

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The Ordinary Nigerians Have Lived As Neighbors Down The Millennia. I Was Talking About The British Who Came And Merged A Whole Number Of Mini States And Big States Into One Unit. But Those People Were Always There, And They Always Managed To Live Side By Side With Their Neighbours. So They Were Not Owned Or Run By One Kingdom. It Was Not Practically Impossible For These People When They Have Different Languages And Religions To Be Neighbors. So It Is That Habit Of Neighbourliness Which Is Destroyed And Put Under Great Strain Again And Again When You Have Things Like Massacres.

People From Different Parts Of The World Can Respond To The Same Story If It Says Something To Them About Their Own History And Their Own Experience.

My Position Is That Serious And Good Art Has Always Existed To Help, To Serve, Humanity. Not To Indict. I Don’t See How Art Can Be Called Art If Its Purpose Is To Frustrate Humanity. To Make Humanity Uncomfortable, Yes. But Intrinsically To Be Against Humanity, That I Don’t Take.

A Goat Does Not Eat Into A Hen's Stomach No Matter How Friendly The Two May Be.

Women And Music Should Not Be Dated.

A Man Who Makes Trouble For Others Is Also Making Trouble For Himself.

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An Angry Man Is Always A Stupid Man.

When I Began Going To School And Learned To Read, I Encountered Stories Of Other People And Other Lands.

I Think Dialects Should Be Left Alone. People Should Write In Whatever Dialect They Feel They Want To Write. In The Fullness Of Time, These Dialects Will Sort Themselves Out.

Many Writers Can't Make A Living. So To Be Able To Teach How To Write Is Valuable To Them. But I Don't Really Know About Its Value To The Student. I Don't Mean It's Useless. But I Wouldn't Have Wanted Anyone To Teach Me How To Write.

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Thought Provoking

What A Man Does Not Know Is Greater Than He.

Thought Provoking

Naming Is Like Putting A Stamp On Something And Fixing It. A Kind Of Formaldehyde Sort Of Fixation, But It Becomes Dead, Sitting There Forever, Frozen. So, I'm Not A Great One For These Modernist, Post Modernist, Post Colonial Labels. I Think They Serve Certain Purpose. You Do Need Some Kind Of Sign Post Here And There, But It Can Also Become An End In Itself.

I Have Found That I Work Best When I Am At Home In Nigeria. But One Learns To Work In Other Places.

You Don't Ever Want To Say To A Young Person, You Can't, Or, You Are No Good. Some People Might Be Able To Do It, But I Don't Think I Am A Policeman For Literature. So I Tell Them, Sweat It Out, Do Your Best.

Each Of My Books Is Different. Deliberately... I Wanted To Create My Society, My People, In Their Fullness.

Actually, I Identify With All My Characters, Good And Bad. I Have To Do That In Order To Make Them Genuine. I Have To Understand Them Even If I Don't Approve Of Them. Not Completely - It's Impossible; Complete Identification Is, In Fact, Not Desirable.

When I Was In England, I Had Seen Advertisements About Typing Agencies; I Had Learned That If You Really Want To Make A Good Impression, You Should Have Your Manuscript Well Typed.

It Is Difficult To Express The Reality Of Ibo Society In Classical English.

We Shall All Live. We Pray For Life, Children, A Good Harvest And Happiness. You Will Have What Is Good For You And I Will Have What Is Good For Me. Let The Kite Perch And Let The Egret Perch Too. If One Says No To The Other, Let His Wing Break.

If You Only Hear One Side Of The Story, You Have No Understanding At All.

This Is Not Pessimism But Rather Casting A Cold Eye On Things. It Is Only One Man's Story, And I Think That Things Will Go Better, But Difficulties Exist And Nothing Is Served By Hiding Them Under A Poetic Veil Or Under A Lyricism Of The Past. I Am Against Slogans.

Just Think Of The Work You've Set Yourself To Do, And Do It As Well As You Can.

The World Is Like A Mask Dancing. If You Want To See It Well, You Do Not Stand In One Place.

One Of The Truest Tests Of Integrity Is Its Blunt Refusal To Be Compromised.

A Disease That Has Never Been Seen Before Cannot Be Cured With Every-day Herbs.

I Am Against People Reaping Where They Have Not Sown. But We Have A Saying That If You Want To Eat A Toad You Should Look For A Fat And Juicy One.

Nigeria Has Had A Complicated Colonial History. My Work Has Examined That Part Of Our Story Extensively.

Nigeria Independence

Ogbuef Ezedudu,who Was The Oldest Man In The Village, Was Telling Two Other Men When They Came To Visit Him That The Punishment For Breaking The Peace Of Ani Had Become Very Mild In Their Clan. "it Has Not Always Been So," He Said. "my Father Told Me That He Had Been Told That In The Past A Man Who Broke The Peace Was Dragged On The Ground Through The Village Until He Died. But After A While This Custom Was Stopped Because It Spoiled The Peace Which It Was Meant To Preserve.

When I'm Writing, I Really Want To Satisfy Myself. I've Got A Story That I Am Working On And Struggling With, And I Want To Tell It The Most Effective Way I Can. That's Really What I Struggle With. And The Thought Of Who May Be Reading It May Be There Somewhere In The Back Of My Mind - I'll Never Say It's Not There Because I Don't Know - But It's Not Really What I'm Thinking About.

If I Say Look Unless You Change Your Leaders I Will Not Give You Any Aid, You Are Likely To Have People Who Say: "to The Hell With You, We Will Struggle On The Way But We Will Do It". Therefore What I Am Saying Is - And I Do Not Whether It Is Coming Through Clearly - There Has To Be A Lot Of Care Exercised By The People Who Are In The Position To Give Or Withhold Assistance: If They Start Throwing Their Weight Around, Using Extreme Language, Seeming To Order Other Nations To Do Their Bidding, Then There Will Not Be A Good Result, It Will Not Be Done.

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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.'

Thought Provoking

I Did Not Think Of Writing As A Career And I Don't Think That I Did This Ever Really, But I Think Of Writing As Something That I Could Do, I Should Do Alongside Whatever Else I Was Doing. It Simply Grew On Me.

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 Something About Important Stories That Is Not Just The Message, But Also The Way That Message Is Conveyed, The Arrangement Of The Words, The Felicity Of The Language. So It's Really A Balance Between Your Commitment, Whether It's Political Or Economic Or Whatever, And Your Craft As An Artist.

A Man Of Worth Never Gets Up To Unsay What He Said Yesterday.

Thought Provoking

If Someone Said, I Want To Translate Your Novel Into Igbo, I Would Say, Go Ahead. But When I Write In The Igbo Language, I Write My Own Dialect. I Write Some Poetry In That Dialect.

What I Can Say Is That It Was Clear To Many Of Us That An Indigenous African Literary Renaissance Was Overdue. A Major Objective Was To Challenge Stereotypes, Myths, And The Image Of Ourselves And Our Continent, And To Recast Them Through Stories- Prose, Poetry, Essays, And Books For Our Children. That Was My Overall Goal.

One Reason Why I Am Quite Angry With What Is Happening In Nigeria Today Is That Everything Has Collapsed. If I Decide To Go Back Now, There Will Be So Many Problems - Where Will I Find The Physical Therapy And Other Things That I Now Require?

There Is No Story That Is Not True.

Things Fall Apart Important

The Writer Is Often Faced With Two Choices--turn Away From The Reality Of Life's Intimidating Complexity Or Conquer Its Mystery By Battling With It. The Writer Who Chooses The Former Soon Runs Out Of Energy And Produces Elegantly Tired Fiction.

Contradictions If Well Understood And Managed Can Spark Off The Fires Of Invention. Orthodoxy Whether Of The Right Or Of The Left Is The Graveyard Of Creativity.

He Is A Fool Who Treats His Brother Worse Than A Stranger.

Thought Provoking

The Sun Will Shine On Those Who Stand Before It Shines On Those Who Kneel Under Them.

In Nigeria, There Is Energy, Whether It Is Lagos, Which Is Sheer Anarchy, But It Is Not Lethargic. It Is Strong, Even Aggressive And If That Energy Could Be Directed To Work It Will Produce Really Enormous Results.

"we Have Heard Stories About White Men Who Make The Powerful Guns And The Strong Drinks And Took Slaves Away Across The Seas, But No One Thought The Stories Were True." [said Obierika]"there Is No Story That Is Not True," Said Uchendu. "the World Has No End, And What Is Good Among One People Is An Abomination With Others. We Have Albinos Among Us. Do You Not Think That They Came To Our Clan By Mistake, That They Have Strayed From Their Way To A Land Where Everybody Is Like Them?"

I Wouldn't Have Wanted Anyone To Teach Me How To Write. That's My Own Taste. I Prefer To Stumble On It.

While We Do Our Good Works Let Us Not Forget That The Real Solution Lies In A World In Which Charity Will Have Become Unnecessary.

If You Have Leaders Who Are Prepared To Incite Group Against Group It Is Very Easy To Manufacture Reasons And Excuses.

A Man Who Calls His Kinsmen To A Feast Does Not Do So To Save Them From Starving. They All Have Food In Their Own Homes. When We Gather Together In The Moonlit Village Ground It Is Not Because Of The Moon. Every Man Can See It In His Own Compound. We Come Together Because It Is Good For Kinsmen To Do So.

I Know That An Important Message Is Not A Novel. To Say That We Should All Be Kind To Our Neighbors Is An Important Statement; It's Not A Novel.

No Man However Great Is Greater Than His People

Thought Provoking

Let The Kite Perch And Let The Eagle Perch Too – If One Says No To The Other, Let His Wing Break.

For People Who Are Coming Out Of An Oral Tradition, It Is Very Exciting To Get Into Reading And Writing And It Is Quite Interesting How Frequently People Want To Write Their Own Story. Sometimes It Is Straight History - This Is How We Came About, How Our Town Was Created, A Lot Of That Kind Of Effort, As Soon As Literacy Came. The First Thing You Wanted To Do Was To Put Something Down About Who You Are Or How You Are Related To You Neighbors. Then The Next Stage Would Be The Stories, The Cultural Part Of The Story: This Is The Kind Of World Our Ancestors Made Or Aspired To.

The Rural Areas Have Been Deprived By The Cities In The Past. Development Resources And Energy Should Be Directed Where The People Live.

An Old Woman Is Always Uneasy When Dry Bones Are Mentioned In A Proverb

Things Fall Apart Important

At The Most One Could Say That His Chi Or ... Personal God Was Good. But The Ibo People Have A Proverb That When A Man Says Yes His Chi Says Yes Also. Okonkwo Said Yes Very Strongly; So His Chi Agreed.

Poetry And Slave Trading Cannot Be Bedfellows. That's Where I Stand.

We Must Now Turn From Considering The Necessary Struggle With Language Arising, As It Were, From Its Very Nature And The Nature Of The Society It Serves To The More Ominous Threat To Its Integrity Brought About Neither By Its Innate Inadequacy Nor Yet By The Incompetence And Carelessness Of Its Ordinary Users, But Rather Engineered Deliberately By Those Who Will Manipulate Words For Their Own Ends.

Men Have Learned To Shoot Without Missing Their Mark And I Have Learned To Fly Without Perching On A Twig.

A Budding Writer Wants To Be Encouraged.

A Functioning, Robust Democracy Requires A Healthy Educated, Participatory Followership, And An Educated, Morally Grounded Leadership.

I Think Writers Are Not Only Writers, They Are Also Citizens.

There Must Be Areas In Which A Particular Character Does Not Represent You.

The Problem With Leaderless Uprisings Taking Over Is That You Don't Always Know What You Get At The Other End. If You Are Not Careful You Could Replace A Bad Government With One Much Worse!

You Cannot Plant Greatness As You Plant Yams Or Maize. Who Ever Planted An Iroko Tree — The Greatest Tree In The Forest? You May Collect All The Iroko Seeds In The World, Open The Soil And Put Them There. It Will Be In Vain. The Great Tree Chooses Where To Grow And We Find It There, So It Is With The Greatness In Men.

When Rimbaud Became A Slave Trader, He Stopped Writing Poetry.

It Is The Story That Owns And Directs Us. It Is The Thing That Makes Us Different From Cattle; It Is The Mark On The Face That Sets One People Apart From Their Neighbors.

When I Think Of The Standing, The Importance And The Erudition Of All These People Who See Nothing About Racism In Heart Of Darkness, I'm Convinced That We Must Really Be Living In Different Worlds.

What Has Happened To Africa Is Very Severe. We Are Talking About The Collapse Of This And The Collapse Of That, Of Good Government, Of The Economy Particularly. And This Has Hit Education Badly. The News You Get From The Universities In Nigeria Is Often Appalling. I Don't Think A Lot Of It Gets Out. There Is The Obsession With Cults And All Kinds Of Dreadful Things Going On And All This Is Taking Its Toll And It Is Not Surprising That Quality Of Students And Graduates Who Come Out Is Not Good. It Will Not Be Surprising If This Shows In The Quality Of Work They Do.

Mr. Brown Had Thought Of Nothing But Numbers. He Should Have Known That The Kingdom Of God Did Not Depend On Large Crowds. Our Lord Himself Stressed The Importance Of Fewness. Narrow Is The Way And Few The Number. To Fill The Lord's Holy Temple With An Idolatrous Crowd Clamoring For Signs Was A Folly Of Everlasting Consequence. Our Lord Used The Whip Only Once In His Life - To Drive The Crowd Away From His Church.

When Brothers Fight To Death A Stranger Inherit Their Father’s Estate

The Man That Brings Ant-infested Faggots Into His Hut Should Not Grumble When Lizards Begin To Pay Him A Visit.

If I Write Novels In A Country In Which Most Citizens Are Illiterate, Who Then Is My Community?

A Man Who Pays Respect To The Great Paves The Way For His Own Greatness

An Artist, In My Understanding Of The Word, Should Side With The People Against The Emperor That Oppresses His Or Her People.

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George Bernard Shaw

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