Among the Igbo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten.
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.
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 fe...
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...
Let no one be fooled by the fact that we may write in English, for we intend to do unheard of things with it.
I don't care about age very much.
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.
You do not know me,’ said Tortoise. ‘I am a changed man. I have learned that a man who makes trouble for others makes trouble for himself.
When mother-cow is chewing grass its young ones watch its mouth
The only thing we have learnt from experience is that we learn nothing from experience.
Age was respected among his people, but achievement was revered. As the elders said, if a child washed his hands he could eat with kings.
When a tradition gathers enough strength to go on for centuries, you don't just turn it off one day.
A functioning, robust democracy requires a healthy educated, participatory followership, and an educated, morally grounded leadership.
In the end I began to understand. There is such a thing as absolute power over narrative. Those who secure this privilege for themselves can arrange stories about others pretty much where, and as, the...
Unoka went into an inner room and soon returned with a small wooden disc containing a kola nut, some alligator pepper and a lump of white chalk. I have kola, he announced when he sat down, and passed...
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...
A child cannot pay for its mother's milk
Storytellers are a threat. They threaten all champions of control, they frighten usurpers of the right-to-freedom of the human spirit -- in state, in church or mosque, in party congress, in the univer...
I tell my students, it's not difficult to identify with somebody like yourself, somebody next door who looks like you. What's more difficult is to identify with someone you don't see, who's very far a...
The relationship with my people, the Nigerian people, is very good. My relationship with the rulers has always been problematic.