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
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.
In practice
In a debate about the role of religions in modern 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.
Prayers for the condemned man will be offered on an adding machine. Numbers constitute the only universal language.
Hell is not fire and brimstone, not a place where you are punished for lying or cheating or stealing. Hell is wanting to be something and somewhere different from where you are.
How does it come about that what an intelligent man expresses is much stupider than what remains inside him?
Nonviolence against humans cannot take firm hold in society as long as brutality and violence are practiced toward other animals.
Only to the extent that men desire peace and brotherhood can the world be made better. No peace even though temporarily obtained, will be permanent, whether to individuals or nations, unless it is built upon the solid foundation of eternal principles.
That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman?
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