Don't take shadows too seriously. Reality is your only safety. Continue to reject illusion.
Wole SoyinkaRead
I'm an Afro-realist. I take what comes, and I do my best to affect what is unacceptable in society.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of accepting reality while striving for social change.
Wole Soyinka's quote reflects the philosophy of Afro-realism, which advocates for an honest recognition of the challenges faced by society while also encouraging active engagement in addressing and changing unacceptable social conditions. It speaks to the duality of acceptance and proactive action in the pursuit of justice and improvement in the community.
In practice
During a speech on social activism, one might say, 'As Wole Soyinka expressed, I'm an Afro-realist. I take what comes, and I do my best to affect what is unacceptable in society.'
Don't take shadows too seriously. Reality is your only safety. Continue to reject illusion.
Trading and religion have always been aligned together in the history of the world, and especially on the African continent.
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.
If Iraq and Afghanistan have taught us anything in recent history, it is the unpredictability of war and that these things are easier to get into than to get out of, and, frankly, the facile way in which too many people talk about, 'Well, let's just go attack them.'
Boundary, n. In political geography, an imaginary line between two nations, separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary rights of another.
It would be foolish to suggest that government is a good custodian of aesthetic goals. But, there is no alternative to the state.
i understand that the world was nothing: a mechanical chaos of casual, brute enmity on which we stupidly impose our hopes and fears. i understood that, finally and absolutely, i alone exist. all the rest, i saw, is merely what pushes me, or what i push against, blindly - as blindly as all that is not myself pushes back. i create the whole universe, blink by blink.
Ye shall only have foes to be hated; but not foes to be despised: ye must be proud of your foes.
What are men? Mortal gods. _x000D_ What are gods? Immortal men.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.