Wole Soyinka is a writer extraordinaire, and via his works, a defender of the oppressed. Also one of Africa’s greatest writers and according to stanford.edu, one of the continent’s most imaginative advocates of native culture.
Born in Abeokuta, Ogun State on July 13th 1934, Mr. Soyinka’s work has taken him all over the world. Most notably, he was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, the first African to be honored in that category. He has also taught in the best Universities such as Obafemi Awolowo University Ife, Cornell University, Emory University, University of Nevada, NYU’s Institute of African American Affairs, Loyola Marymount University, Oxford, Harvard and Yale.
All his accomplishments aside, Wole Soyinka’s command of the English language is indeed extraordinary. His books are often read with a dictionary by the reader’s side. Professor Wole Soyinka always put a hold on us with his big big grammar. Check out some of his very complicated quotes below:
1. A tiger does not shout its tigritude, it acts.
2. I am a glutton for tranquility.
3. 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.
4. I cannot accept the definition of collective good as articulated by a privileged minority in society, especially when that minority is in power.
5. 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?
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. A war, with its attendant human suffering, must, when that evil is unavoidable, be made to fragment more than buildings: It must shatter the foundations of thought and re-create. Only in this way does every individual share in the cataclysm and understand the purpose of sacrifice.
9. 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.
10. Education is lacking in most of those who pontificate.
11. 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.
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