Don't take shadows too seriously. Reality is your only safety. Continue to reject illusion.
Wole SoyinkaRead
There is not a special imposition on writers to be activists. All that does is encourage writers to write propaganda. Propaganda can be written by anybody, including dictators.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Writers should not feel pressured to be activists; doing so can dilute their creative expression into mere propaganda.
Wole Soyinka emphasizes that writing should not be limited to activism or political agendas, as this reduces the role of the writer to that of a propagandist. True creativity and literary artistry can arise from various subjects, and forcing a political stance onto writers can result in a loss of genuine expression, reducing valuable literary work to mere political statements.
Themes
WritingActivismPropagandaCreativityLiterature
In practice
Example use cases
In a literary discussion on the role of authors, one might use this quote to highlight the importance of creative freedom.
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.
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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.
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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