When we hear a house has fallen do we ask if the ceiling fell with it?
Interpretation
This quote reflects on our tendency to overlook the broader implications of a situation and the interconnectedness of events.
Chinua Achebe's quote suggests that when we learn about a significant event, such as a house falling, we often focus on the primary outcome rather than considering the full scope of consequences that may accompany it, like the state of the ceiling. This invites deeper reflection on how we assess situations and underscores the importance of looking beyond the surface to understand the complete picture and its ramifications.
In practice
In a discussion about infrastructure safety, this quote could highlight the importance of considering all elements of a structure.
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.
None but a good man is really a living man, and the more good any man does, the more he really lives. All the rest is death, or belongs to it.
Social justice cannot be attained by violence. Violence kills what it intends to create.
...The men eyed her with the automatic mix of curiosity, lust, and aesthetic judgment they always gave young women, subject to object, the way you'd stare at an animal. She pretended not to notice. To remind them she was a person was too much effort. Objects bore no guilt.
An interest in the brain requires no justification other than a curiosity to know why we are here, what we are doing here, and where we are going.
Feminism is dated? Yes, for privileged women like my daughter and all of us here today, but not for most of our sisters in the rest of the world who are still forced into premature marriage, prostitution, forced labor - they have children that they don't want or they cannot feed.
Sin is the willful transgression of divine law. The Atonement of Jesus Christ is the gift of God to His children to correct and overcome the consequences of sin. The gift of the Atonement of Jesus Christ provides us at all times and at all places with the blessings of repentance and forgiveness.
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