Don't take shadows too seriously. Reality is your only safety. Continue to reject illusion.
Wole SoyinkaRead
Some of the greatest uprisings and consequent civil wars in Mexico have centered squarely on the ownership of land.
Interpretation
Land ownership is a critical factor in social conflicts and power struggles.
Wole Soyinka highlights the significance of land ownership as a catalyst for conflict in Mexico's history. The quote suggests that disputes over land can lead to significant societal upheaval and civil strife, emphasizing the deep connection between resources, power, and human conflict.
In practice
During a lecture on social justice, one could use this quote to discuss the impacts of land ownership on conflicts.
Don't take shadows too seriously. Reality is your only safety. Continue to reject illusion.
Trading and religion have always been aligned together in the history of the world, and especially on the African continent.
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.
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.
I have a kind of magnetic attraction to situations of violence.
Art is solace; art is vision, and when I pick up a literary work, I am a consumer of literature for its own sake.
We're all complicit in the things we may be trying to oppose. I'm complicit in the things that I'm trying to oppose.
Show me the country that has no strikes and I'll show you the country in which there is no liberty.
Communism is the death of the soul. It is the organization of total conformity - in short, of tyranny - and it is committed to making tyranny universal.
Ethics, too, are nothing but reverence for life. This is what gives me the fundamental principle of morality, namely, that good consists in maintaining, promoting, and enhancing life, and that destroying, injuring, and limiting life are evil.
The first time it was reported that our friends were being butchered there was a cry of horror. Then a hundred were butchered. But when a thousand were butchered and there was no end to the butchery, a blanket of silence spread. When evil-doing comes like falling rain, nobody calls out "stop!" When crimes begin to pile up they become invisible. When sufferings become unendurable the cries are no longer heard. The cries, too, fall like rain in summer.
Some of mankind's most terrible misdeeds have been committed under the spell of certain magic words or phrases.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.