Don't take shadows too seriously. Reality is your only safety. Continue to reject illusion.
Wole SoyinkaRead
Trading and religion have always been aligned together in the history of the world, and especially on the African continent.
Interpretation
This quote reflects the historical intertwining of trade and religious practices, particularly in Africa.
Wole Soyinka highlights the long-standing relationship between trading and religious beliefs, indicating that throughout history, these two spheres have influenced each other significantly. On the African continent, this relationship could be seen in how trade networks facilitated the spread of religious ideas, and vice versa, shaping the cultural and spiritual landscapes of societies.
In practice
In a discussion about the cultural practices of African communities, this quote illustrates the role of trade in shaping their spiritual lives.
Don't take shadows too seriously. Reality is your only safety. Continue to reject illusion.
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.
I'm an Afro-realist. I take what comes, and I do my best to affect what is unacceptable in society.
Global interconnectedness has led to the emergence of a new political power, that of consumers and their associations. It is good for people to realize that purchasing is always a moral - and not simply economic - act.
Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity.
We cannot choose freedom established on a hierarchy of degrees of freedom, on a caste system of equality like military rank. We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.
We [Raymond and Meursault] stared at each other without blinking, and everything came to a stop there between the sea, the sand, and the sun, and the double silence of the flute and the water. It was then that I realized that you could either shoot or not shoot.
Men make their own history but not in circumstances of their own choosing.
For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes (Matthew 5). But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course, that's Moses, not Jesus. I haven't heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere. "Blessed are the merciful" in a courtroom? "Blessed are the peacemakers" in the Pentagon? Give me a break!
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