Top 80 Wole Soyinka Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Be yourself. Ultimately just be yourself.”

— Wole Soyinka

2. “A tiger does not proclaim his tigritude, he pounces.”

— Wole Soyinka

3. “We live in a materialist world, and materialism appeals so strongly to humanity, no matter where.”

— Wole Soyinka

4. “The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism.”

— Wole Soyinka

5. “You cannot live a normal existence if you haven’t taken care of a problem that affects your life and affects the lives of others, values that you hold which in fact define your very existence.”

— Wole Soyinka

6. “Power is domination, control, and therefore a very selective form of truth which is a lie.”

— Wole Soyinka

7. “I grew up in an atmosphere where words were an integral part of culture.”

— Wole Soyinka

8. “My father used to tell me stories before I fell asleep. When the children would gather, at a certain point, I had a tendency to make up my own elementary variations on stories I had heard, or to invent totally new ones.”

— Wole Soyinka

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

9. “The man dies in all those that keep silent.”

— Wole Soyinka

10. “Books and all forms of writing are terror to those who wish to suppress the truth.”

— Wole Soyinka

11. “Looking at faces of people, one gets the feeling there’s a lot of work to be done.”

— Wole Soyinka

12. “No man beholds his mother’s womb Yet who denies it’s there? Coiled To the navel of the world is that Endless cord that links us all To the great Origin. If I lose my way. The trailing cord will bring me to the roots.”

— Wole Soyinka

13. “And I believe that the best learning process of any kind of craft is just to look at the work of others.”

— Wole Soyinka

14. “Suddenly the world has run amok and left you alone and sane behind.”

— Wole Soyinka

15. “It’s the place to begin, always – to return to home, literally.”

— Wole Soyinka

16. “I am a glutton for tranquility.”

— Wole Soyinka

17. “I am convinced that Nigeria would have been a more highly developed country without the oil. I wished we’d never smelled the fumes of petroleum.”

— Wole Soyinka

Featured in: Country Quotes

18. “Colonialism bred an innate arrogance, but when you undertake that sort of imperial adventure, that arrogance gives way to a feeling of accommodativeness. You take pride in your openness.”

— Wole Soyinka

19. “The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny.”

— Wole Soyinka

20. “Under a dictatorship, a nation ceases to exist. All that remains is a fiefdom, a planet of slaves regimented by aliens from outer-space.”

— Wole Soyinka

21. “But the ultimate lesson is just sit down and write. That’s all.”

— Wole Soyinka

22. “Romance is the sweetening of the soul With fragrance offered by the stricken heart.”

— Wole Soyinka

Featured in: Romance Quotes

23. “The hand that dips into the bottom of the pot will eat the biggest snail.”

— Wole Soyinka

24. “Sadness is twilight’s kiss on earth.”

— Wole Soyinka

25. “We do not ask the mountain’s aid to crack a walnut.”

— Wole Soyinka

26. “But theater, because of its nature, both text, images, multimedia effects, has a wider base of communication with an audience. That’s why I call it the most social of the various art forms.”

— Wole Soyinka

27. “Don’t take shadows too seriously. Reality is your only safety. Continue to reject illusion.”

— Wole Soyinka

28. “For the fire consumes all but the arsonist.”

— Wole Soyinka

29. “Each time I think Ive created time for myself, along comes a throwback to disrupt my private space.”

— Wole Soyinka

30. “I don’t know any other way to live but to wake up everyday armed with my convictions, not yielding them to the threat of danger and to the power and force of people who might despise me.”

— Wole Soyinka

31. “I never hesitated, as a student, in embracing the necessity of violence. In South Africa, I didn’t just accept it; I looked forward to it as a mission.”

— Wole Soyinka

32. “A tiger doesn’t proclaim its tigerness; it jumps on its prey.”

— Wole Soyinka

33. “For me, justice is the prime condition of humanity.”

— Wole Soyinka

34. “It’s my duty to fight those who have chosen to belong to the party of death, those who say they receive their orders from God somewhere and believe they have a duty to set the world on fire to achieve their own salvation.”

— Wole Soyinka

35. “I cannot accept the definition of collective good as articulated by a privileged minority in society, especially when that minority is in power.”

— Wole Soyinka

36. “Things do not always happen as one plans. There are many disappointments in life. There is always the unexpected. You plan carefully, you decide on one step after another, and then... well, that is life. We are not God. So you see, one cannot afford to be weighed down by the unexpected. You will find that only determination will bring one through, sheer determination. And faith in God. Don’t ever neglect your prayers...”

— Wole Soyinka

37. “I consider the process of gestation just as important as when you’re actually sitting down putting words to the paper.”

— Wole Soyinka

38. “One, a mass movement from within, which, as you know, is constantly being put down brutally but which, again, regroups and moves forward as is happening right now as we are speaking.”

— Wole Soyinka

39. “I have one abiding religion-human liberty.”

— Wole Soyinka

40. “There’s something about the theater which makes my fingertips tingle.”

— Wole Soyinka

41. “My horizon on humanity is enlarged by reading the writers of poems, seeing a painting, listening to some music, some opera, which has nothing at all to do with a volatile human condition or struggle or whatever. It enriches me as a human being.”

— Wole Soyinka

Featured in: Reading Quotes

42. “Well, some people say I’m pessimistic because I recognize the eternal cycle of evil. All I say is, look at the history of mankind right up to this moment and what do you find?”

— Wole Soyinka

43. “History teaches us to beware of the excitation of the liberated and the injustices that often accompany their righteous thirst for justice.”

— Wole Soyinka

44. “A human feast is an indifferent morsel to a god.”

— Wole Soyinka

45. “African film makers are scraping by on a mere pittance.”

— Wole Soyinka

46. “Very conscious of the fact that an effort was being made to destroy my mind, because I was deprived of books, deprived of any means of writing, deprived of human companionship. You never know how much you need it until you’re deprived of it.”

— Wole Soyinka

47. “As I grew older and more mature, I’ve been able to move beyond the immediate response of violence to a projection of the pragmatic, political consequences of that violence. So it’s an effort to attain equilibrium.”

— Wole Soyinka

48. “There is something really horrific for any human being who feels he is being consumed by other people.”

— Wole Soyinka

49. “If you believe in democracy, are you not thereby obliged to accept, without discrimination, the fall-outs that come with a democratic choice, even if this means the termination of the democratic process itself?”

— Wole Soyinka

50. “I think that feeling that if one believed absolutely in any cause, then one must have the confidence, the self-certainty, to go through with that particular course of action.”

— Wole Soyinka