Wole Soyinka Quotes

There is not a special imposition on writers to be activists. All that does is encourage writers to write propaganda. Propaganda can be written by anybody, including dictators.

I will not have the Federal Theater used politically.

Art can be political, but when it becomes politicized, the purity is ruined.

We write to expose the unexposed. Most human beings are dedicated to keeping that one door shut. But the writer's job is to see what's behind it, to see the bleak unspeakable stuff, and to turn the unspeakable into words - not just into any words but if we can, into rhythm and blues. You can't do this without discovering your own true voice, and you can't find your true voice and peer behind the door and report honestly and clearly to us if your parents are reading over your shoulder.

It kills your writing if you try to manipulate it with crude politics.

When I started to write, it was the '70s, and throughout that decade, we didn't have any problems with book challenges or censorship.

What can we put into the hands of people under oppressive regimes to help them? For me, a big part of it is information, knowledge - the ability to defeat propaganda by understanding it.

Before you're a writer, you're a citizen, a human being, and therefore the weapons of the citizen are at your disposal to use or not use.

I am one of those authors who consider it their highest honour and their highest liberty to have a completely untrammelled chance of using their pens to serve the working people.

I think people are confusing the right to write with the right to be published.

In any country, in any city, there will be political influence on what is said, what kind of images are to be projected and, yes, of course artists can be and are influenced by politicians.

It wasn't my natural inclination to get into writing protest songs.

When you mutilate movies for mass media, you tamper with the hearts and minds of America.

I don't feel that as an artist my job is to offer PR propaganda, whether for the good or for the bad.

I think 'The Giver' is such a moral book, so filled with important truths, that I couldn't believe anyone would want to suppress it, to keep it from kids.

This is a nation that has lost the ability to be self-critical, and that makes a lie out of the freedoms.

I really don't like plays or movies that service propaganda.

I think if German literature could survive the '40s and Russian literature could survive Sovietism, American literature can survive Google.

The goons in authority here do give us freedom to write, knowing full well that only a few people read anyway. What they cannot stand is that a writer should additionally give voice to the voiceless or organize them for action. In short, they do not want literature on the streets! And that is where, in Africa, it must be

All literatures can have political uses and misuses. Sometimes politics can enhance, sometimes it can get in the way of imaginative literature...

Words are capable of shaking the entire structure of government

There are comrades without elementary knowledge of politics, and this brings them to entertain absurd ideas, such as the idea that we live in a time where critical journalism remains a necessity.

I canceled the Russian shows because, from the days of the first Dire Straits album, I've supported Amnesty International. It's not a good thing to read about people being jailed for no reason, so I raised my hand and made a small objection. It was good to do - but where do you stop?

I don't want the government to be censoring people, I don't think there should be censoring boards, but I think that means that we the artists need to be very careful about what we're putting out and what were saying and how we're saying it. And I don't think we're being as careful as we should be.

If there are places where I didn't feel comfortable with the particular politics, then I just couldn't do a concert there.