Don't take shadows too seriously. Reality is your only safety. Continue to reject illusion.
Wole SoyinkaRead
All religions accept that there is something called 'criminality.' And criminality cannot be excused by religious fervour.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Criminal actions are universally acknowledged and cannot be justified by religious beliefs.
Wole Soyinka's quote emphasizes that despite the diversity of religious beliefs, all faiths recognize the concept of criminality. It asserts that engaging in criminal behavior cannot be defended or excused by one's religious passion or commitment, highlighting the need for accountability that transcends religious justifications.
Themes
ReligionCriminalityAccountabilityMoralityEthical Behavior
In practice
Example use cases
In a debate about the role of religions in modern society.
More from Wole Soyinka
All quotes βTrading and religion have always been aligned together in the history of the world, and especially on the African continent.
Wole SoyinkaRead
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.
Wole SoyinkaRead
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.
Wole SoyinkaRead
I have a kind of magnetic attraction to situations of violence.
Wole SoyinkaRead
Art is solace; art is vision, and when I pick up a literary work, I am a consumer of literature for its own sake.
Wole SoyinkaRead
Similar quotes
Listen to the Exhortation of the Dawn! Look to this Day! For it is Life, the very Life of Life. In its brief course lie all the Verities and Realities of your Existence. The Bliss of Growth, The Glory of Action, The Splendor of Beauty; For Yesterday is but a Dream, And To-morrow is only a Vision; But To-day well lived makes Every Yesterday a Dream of Happiness, And every Tomorrow a Vision of Hope. Look well therefore to this Day! Such is the Salutation of the Dawn!
KalidasaRead
I love to doubt as well as know.
Dante AlighieriRead
The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.
William JamesRead
The phrase "It's absolutely the same with me, I..." seems to be an approving echo, a way of continuing the other's thought, but that is an illusion: in reality it is a brute revolt against a brutal violence, an effort to free our own ear from bondage and to occupy the enemy's ear by force. Because all of man's life among his kind is nothing other than a battle to seize the ear of others.
Milan KunderaRead
All of the Antilles, every island, is an effort of memory: every mind, every racial biography culminating in amnesia and fog. Pieces of sunlight through the fog and sudden rainbows, arcs-en-ciel. That is the effort, the labour of the Antillean imagination, rebuilding its gods from bamboo frames, phrase by phrase.
Derek WalcottRead
Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry is own weight, this is a frightening prospect.
Eleanor RooseveltRead