Don't take shadows too seriously. Reality is your only safety. Continue to reject illusion.
Wole SoyinkaRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote critiques the voters of a political party based on various forms of blindness that prevent them from seeing the truth.
Wole Soyinka's quote highlights the different types of blindness that can affect voters, suggesting that those who support the PDP (Peoples Democratic Party) do so due to intellectual ignorance, ethnic bias, fear of change driven by corruption, or a combination of these detrimental factors. By describing these voters as suffering from 'terminal sicknesses,' he calls attention to the critical need for awareness and critical thinking in political participation.
Themes
PoliticsVotingBlindnessCorruptionEthnicity
In practice
Example use cases
In a debate about electoral systems, one might use this quote to illustrate the importance of informed voting.
More from Wole Soyinka
All quotes →Trading and religion have always been aligned together in the history of the world, and especially on the African continent.
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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.
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Rwanda, which is one of the younger independent states in Africa, must be regarded as a model of how great human trauma can be transformed to commence true reconstruction of people. Human trauma can lead to stunted growth and mass withdrawal.
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I have a kind of magnetic attraction to situations of violence.
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Art is solace; art is vision, and when I pick up a literary work, I am a consumer of literature for its own sake.
Wole SoyinkaRead
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