When a tradition gathers enough strength to go on for centuries, you don't just turn it off one day.
Interpretation
Traditions take time to establish and cannot be easily discarded.
Chinua Achebeβs quote highlights the significance of tradition in society, emphasizing that once a tradition has endured for a long period, it becomes deeply embedded in cultural practices and cannot be abruptly eliminated. This reflects the complex nature of societal change, where deeply rooted customs require thoughtful consideration and gradual evolution rather than immediate discontinuation.
In practice
During a speech about cultural identity.
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.
A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery.
Everyone needs a chance to evolve.
Every immigrant who comes here should be required within five years to learn English or leave the country.
Every generation feels it has the problems that will destroy it. That's because we can perceive them a long time before we have the ability to fix them.
We have not yet arrived, but every point at which we stop requires a re-definition of our destination.
Up until 1920, women couldn't vote. Until 1974, married women couldn't get their own credit cards or, in some cases, their own loans. Basically, the husband's professional, social, and economic identity covered the individual identity of the wife.
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