Chinua Achebe Quotes

May God be my witness that there will not be a poor man in my Czardom... and even to my last shirt I will share with all.

Charity and philanthropy are not justice.

Charity is only a waystation on the road to justice.

Importantly, I still give money to homeless people - and all other charities.

One must be poor to know the luxury of giving!

You can't not be changed by the experience of seeing extreme poverty. You start to want to think about ways in which you can make the world better.

I think it's naive to pray for world peace if we're not going to change the form in which we live.

You have to feel more involved than just writing out a cheque. Charity is almost the wrong word - I think people are beginning to feel more responsible for the world.

There's no compassion like the penny.

Benevolence has come somewhat into fashion of late.

I have always wanted to be Number One, but I wanted power solely to help the poor and disadvantaged.

I wanted to help the world be more just.

I wanted to be a doctor at some point, and I was always bringing home strays from school: people who were too poor to pay fees or have food. My parents never rebuked me or told me that they were hard-pressed, too.

If my fans want to do something for me when that time comes, I say, don't waste your money on me. Help the homeless. Help the needy... people who don't have no food... Instead of some big funeral, where they come from here and there and all over. Save it.

While Pop lived his life in comfort, he was always generous to the less fortunate.

The poverty of a man of benevolence is not to be considered as poverty but only as his temporary inability to exercise his inherent duty.

Whenever I had anything and saw a fellow being suffering, I was more anxious to relieve him than to benefit myself. And this is one of the true secrets of my being a poor man to this day.

Though easy to define, it is important to understand the significance of philanthropy. I believe it is really a state of mind: where one feels empowered and equipped to fill the huge gaps in the existing system.

As a young man, I was a navy officer in Vietnam. I made $320 a month and would always give away $50 a month to a family I felt that was in greater need than me, in addition to my tithing to my church. I've just always felt in my heart, coming from a very humble background, that there are plenty of people who need a break in life.

We can hardly call a beggar an obstacle to generosity.

Martin Luther King would celebrate the symbolic status (of having a black president), but he would examine what the real substance was. And if he saw that poor and working people were not at the center of public policy, he would be deeply, deeply upset.

We should not serve the poor like they were Jesus. We should serve the poor because they are Jesus.

Jesus said when the woman poured the alabaster bottle of perfume on him that was worth almost a year's wages, and Judas, who was very money-minded, said you shouldn't have done that, because you're wasting that, we could have sold that and given it to the poor. And Jesus himself said, you will always have the poor with you, but she has done this as an honor to me, and she will be honored for it all of her days. And so you never run out of poor people. You could give everything you had, I could give everything I had, and the world would still be full of poor people.

Charity isn't a good substitute for justice.

The bread which you hold back belongs to the hungry; the coat, which you guard in your locked storage-chests, belongs to the naked; the footwear mouldering in your closet belongs to those without shoes. The silver that you keep hidden in a safe place belongs to the one in need. Thus, however many are those whom you could have provided for, so many are those whom you wrong.