Don't take shadows too seriously. Reality is your only safety. Continue to reject illusion.
Wole SoyinkaRead
One has to confront history honestly.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Facing history requires honesty and integrity.
Wole Soyinka's quote emphasizes the importance of confronting the truths of history without distortion or denial. To engage meaningfully with the past, one must be willing to acknowledge its complexities and the lessons it holds, fostering a clearer understanding of both individual and collective narratives.
Themes
HistoryHonestyTruthConfrontationLearning
In practice
Example use cases
In a history class, when discussing the impact of colonialism, one might say, 'As Wole Soyinka reminds us, we have to confront history honestly to learn from it.'
More from Wole Soyinka
All quotes βTrading and religion have always been aligned together in the history of the world, and especially on the African continent.
Wole SoyinkaRead
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.
Wole SoyinkaRead
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.
Wole SoyinkaRead
I have a kind of magnetic attraction to situations of violence.
Wole SoyinkaRead
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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History is a tangled skein that one may take up at any point, and break when one has unravelled enough.
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But what began in 1941 was a process of destruction not planned in advance, not organized centrally by any agency. There was no blueprint and there was no budget for destructive measures. They were taken step by step, one step at a time. Thus came about not so much a plan being carried out, but an incredible meeting of minds, a consensus - mind reading by a far-flung bureaucracy.
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