A Tree Has Fallen........ Chinua Achebe

It is said(I don't know who said it), but it is said that there is no greater way to honor a man than through his art. So, rather than belabor you with the story of his life, which you can read in any daily or online at wikipedia. I choose to honor this great man by his words.  Below are some thought provoking quotes by a great author and a great mind. ....... Chinua Achebe.

When suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool.

 The only thing we have learnt from experience is that we learn nothing from experience.

Nigeria is what it is because its leaders are not what they should be.


A functioning, robust democracy requires a healthy educated, participatory followership, and an educated, morally grounded leadership.

Democracy is not something you put away for ten years, and then in the 11th year you wake up and start practicing again. We have to begin to learn to rule ourselves again.

 

The whole idea of a stereotype is to simplify. Instead of going through the problem of all this great diversity - that it's this or maybe that - you have just one large statement; it is this.

If you don't like someone's story, you write your own.

 

Every generation must recognize and embrace the task it is peculiarly designed by history and by providence to perform.

 

 Procrastination is a lazy man's apology.

 

 

I would be quite satisfied if my novels (especially the ones I set in the past) did no more than teach my readers that their past - with all its imperfections - was not one long night of savagery from which the first Europeans acting on God's behalf delivered them

 

 

You must develop the habit of skepticism, not swallow every piece of superstition you are told by witch-doctors and professors.

 "What has consistently escaped most Nigerians in this entire travesty is the fact that mediocrity destroys the very fabric of a country as surely as a war _ ushering in all sorts of banality, ineptitude, corruption and debauchery," 

 A man's life from birth to death was a series of transition rites which brought him nearer and nearer to his ancestors.