quotes from classic

Power is domination, control, and therefore a very selective form of truth which is a lie.

more quotes from Wole Soyinka

I found, when I left, that there were others who felt the same way. We'd meet, they'd come and seek me out, we'd talk about the future. And I found that their depression and pessimism was every bit as acute as mine.

more quotes from Wole Soyinka

One, a mass movement from within, which, as you know, is constantly being put down brutally but which, again, regroups and moves forward as is happening right now as we are speaking.

more quotes from Wole Soyinka

It isn't so much that I became more of an activist after my imprisonment, it's rather that the situation in Nigeria deteriorated to such an extent that the degree, the intensity, of my activism had to be elevated correspondingly.

more quotes from Wole Soyinka

Making the Abacha regime understand that the color of the skin makes no difference, that when you have a minority regime oppressing the majority, as in Apartheid South Africa, the treatment has got to be the same as was meted out to Apartheid South Africa.

more quotes from Wole Soyinka

I think that feeling that if one believed absolutely in any cause, then one must have the confidence, the self-certainty, to go through with that particular course of action.

more quotes from Wole Soyinka

I consider the process of gestation just as important as when you're actually sitting down putting words to the paper.

more quotes from Wole Soyinka

And gradually they're beginning to recognize the fact that there's nothing more secure than a democratic, accountable, and participatory form of government. But it's sunk in only theoretically, it has not yet sunk in completely in practical terms.

more quotes from Wole Soyinka

There's something about the theater which makes my fingertips tingle.

more quotes from Wole Soyinka

I'm not surrendering that space for some bunch of thugs and murderers and torturers and rapists and robbers. It's just unthinkable. So from that standpoint, you could say that I'm an optimist in the sense that I'm confident I will take it back.

more quotes from Wole Soyinka

Well, the first thing is that truth and power for me form an antithesis, an antagonism, which will hardly ever be resolved. I can define in fact, can simplify the history of human society, the evolution of human society, as a contest between power and freedom.

more quotes from Wole Soyinka

But theater, because of its nature, both text, images, multimedia effects, has a wider base of communication with an audience. That's why I call it the most social of the various art forms.

more quotes from Wole Soyinka

I was going to direct The Beatification of Area Boy in Kingston, Jamaica, an opportunity at which I leapt because I know Kingston very well. I've taught at the university there periodically as a visitor.

more quotes from Wole Soyinka

One thing I can tell you is this, that I am not a methodical writer.

more quotes from Wole Soyinka

There's a kind of dynamic quality about theater and that dynamic quality expresses itself in relation to, first of all, the environment in which it's being staged; then the audience, the nature of the audience, the quality of the audience.

more quotes from Wole Soyinka

I believe that there is a kind of osmotic process whereby one intuitively absorbs the various strands that went into the making of a play, a poem, etc.

more quotes from Wole Soyinka

It takes a jaundiced view of the much-vaunted glorious past of Africa. And I suppose since then I've been doing nothing but the danse macabre in this political jungle of ours.

more quotes from Wole Soyinka

My horizon on humanity is enlarged by reading the writers of poems, seeing a painting, listening to some music, some opera, which has nothing at all to do with a volatile human condition or struggle or whatever. It enriches me as a human being.

more quotes from Wole Soyinka

And I believe that the best learning process of any kind of craft is just to look at the work of others.

more quotes from Wole Soyinka

It's been difficult, and without a question I've had moments when I just wondered whether we're not really pursuing an impossible ideal.

more quotes from Wole Soyinka