Don't take shadows too seriously. Reality is your only safety. Continue to reject illusion.
Wole SoyinkaRead
I have a kind of magnetic attraction to situations of violence.
Interpretation
The quote reflects an individual's inner conflict and complex relationship with violence and conflict.
Wole Soyinka's quote expresses a personal tendency to be drawn to violent situations, suggesting an innate curiosity or engagement with the darker aspects of humanity and society. This attraction may reflect deeper themes of resistance, social justice, or the human condition, indicating that violence, despite its destructive nature, can compel attention and provoke thought, challenging individuals to confront uncomfortable truths.
In practice
During a discussion on human psychology, one might quote Soyinka to emphasize the complexities of human attraction to chaos.
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.
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.
Thinking gives off smoke to prove the existence of fire. A mystic sits inside the burning. There are wonderful shapes in rising smoke that imagination loves to watch. But it's a mistake to leave the fire for that filmy sight. Stay here at the flame's core.
The worst thing for a writer is to know another writer, and worse than that, to know a number of other writers. Like flies on the same turd.
The totalitarian states can do great things, but there is one thing they cannot do: they cannot give the factory-worker a rifle and tell him to take it home and keep it in his bedroom. That rifle, hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or laborer's cottage, is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there.
Racial profiling punishes innocent individuals for the past actions of those who look and sound like them. It misdirects crucial resources and undercuts the trust needed between law enforcement and the communities they serve. It has no place in our national discourse, and no place in our nation's police departments.
There is still much debate about whether torture has been effective in eliciting information - the assumption being, apparently, that if it is effective, then it may be justified.
Grimly, she realized that clocks don't make a sound that even remotely resembles ticking, tocking. It was more the sound of a hammer, upside down, hacking methodically at the earth. It was the sound of a grave.
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