...when we are comfortable and inattentive, we run the risk of committing grave injustices absentmindedly.
Interpretation
This quote warns that when we become complacent and distracted, we may unknowingly cause serious harm or injustice.
Chinua Achebe highlights the dangers of becoming too comfortable in our lives, suggesting that inattentiveness and complacency can lead to significant mistakes, particularly in the realm of justice. By pointing out the risk of committing 'grave injustices' while we are distracted, Achebe calls for mindfulness and active engagement in our moral responsibilities, emphasizing the importance of being aware of our surroundings and the impact of our actions.
In practice
During a speech about social responsibility, one might quote Achebe to emphasize the importance of staying engaged in societal issues.
In fact, I thought that Christianity was very a good and a very valuable thing for us. But after a while, I began to feel that the story that I was told about this religion wasn't perhaps completely whole, that something was left out.
Writers don't give prescriptions. They give headaches!
Mr. Brown had thought of nothing but numbers. He should have known that the kingdom of God did not depend on large crowds. Our Lord Himself stressed the importance of fewness. Narrow is the way and few the number. To fill the Lord's holy temple with an idolatrous crowd clamoring for signs was a folly of everlasting consequence. Our Lord used the whip only once in His life - to drive the crowd away from His church.
It is the storyteller who makes us what we are, who creates history. The storyteller creates the memory that the survivors must have - otherwise their surviving would have no meaning.
Writing has always been a serious business for me. I felt it was a moral obligation. A major concern of the time was the absence of the African voice. Being part of that dialogue meant not only sitting at the table but effectively telling the African story from an African perspective - in full earshot of the world.
An angry man is always a stupid man.
I often think I can see it in myself and in other young writers, this desperate desire to please coupled with a kind of hostility to the reader.
All that happens when your dreams come true is a slow, melting realization that it wasn't what you thought.
That distrust which intrudes so often on your mind is a mode of melancholy, which, if it be the business of a wise man to be happy, it is foolish to indulge; and if it be a duty to preserve our faculties entire for their proper use, it is criminal. Suspicion is very often an useless pain.
If men possessed wisdom, which stands in the same relation to the form of man as the sight to the eye, they would not cause any injury to themselves or to others; for the knowledge of truth removes hatred and quarrels, and prevents mutual injuries.
A man who gets the reputation of rising at dawn can sleep to noon.
It now seemed to me that all my other guesses had been only self-pleasing dreams spun out of my wishes, but now I was awake.
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