Well, the first thing is that truth and power for me form an antithesis, an antagonism, which will hardly ever be resolved. I can define in fact, can simplify the history of human society, the evolution of human society, as a contest between power and freedom.
Wole Soyinka
Related I like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. ... KELLY JONES It is an awesome thing to comprehend the magnitude of the fact that what a human being dreams and im... VANNA BONTA It does not seem that the contradiction which exists between the aristocratic function of art and th... HERBERT READ The church, inserted and active in human society and in history, does not exist in order to exercise... CLAUDIO HUMMES History shows, in my opinion, that no nation can survive the tension, conflict and antagonism of two... RICHARD LAMM Weapons are an important factor in war, but not the decisive factor; it is people, not things, that ... MAO ZEDONG The uniqueness of the United States in human history is the United States is the first global power ... AHMET DAVUTOGLU The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be lia... JAMES MADISON You have to look at history as an evolution of society. JEAN CHRETIEN Any power must be an enemy of mankind which enslaves the individual by terror and force, whether it ... TS (THOMAS STEARNS) ELIOT Any power must be an enemy of mankind which enslaves the individual by terror and force, whether it ... ALBERT EINSTEIN In a society where the rights and potential of women are constrained, no man can be truly free. He m... MARY ROBINSON Any power must be an enemy of mankind which enslaves the individual by terror or force, whether it a... ALBERT EINSTEIN A man who chooses between drinking a glass of milk and a glass of a solution of potassium cyanide do... LUDWIG VON MISES There is a collective as well as an individual humor inclining peoples to sadness or cheerfulness, m... EMILE DURKHEIM I long for a South African society that's free of ideological forces - no society can ever reall... DAMON GALGUT 'Country' and 'city' are very powerful words, and this is not surprising when we remember how much t... RAYMOND WILLIAMS The differences between the sexes are the single most important fact of human society GEORGE GILDER The differences between the sexes are the single most important fact of human society. GEORGE GILDER The penetration of society by the Internet and the penetration of the Internet by society is the bes... JULIAN ASSANGE If a test of civilization be sought, none can be so sure as the condition of that half of society ov... HARRIET MARTINEAU If a test of civilization be sought, none can be so sure as the condition of that half of society ov... HARRIET MARTINEAU No civilized society can long exist, with an active power in its bosom that is stronger than the law... JAMES F. COOPER ...no civilized society can long exist, with an active power in its bosom that is stronger than the ... JAMES FENIMORE COOPER The ultimate relationship between justice and law will be an eternal subject for speculation and ana... ROBERT KENNEDY Nothing has ever been more insupportable for a man and a human society than freedom. –The Gra... FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY An "ideal society" would be the graveyard of human greatness. NICOLAS GOMEZ DAVILA The human being is in the most literal sense a political animal, not merely a gregarious animal, but... KARL MARX I like films to be pure cinema, but I also like them to provide a snapshot of a family, a society or... TAHAR RAHIM I believe in one thing only, the power of human will. JOSEPH STALIN As every student in Philosophy 101 learns, nothing can force me to believe that anyone except me is ... STEVEN PINKER Mis-define the law of brotherly love by giving men a claim on their neighbors and you have destroyed... FREDERICK NYMEYER Human history in essence is the history of ideas. H. G. WELLS Every society in the history of man has upheld the institution of marriage as a bond between a man a... RICK SANTORUM Your deeds exceed the power of human imagination. They are without equal in the history of mankind. ... LENI RIEFENSTAHL I don't see any kind of mirror of power, male power, that is, as a form of liberation. I don'... SANDRA CISNEROS The power of heart is much stronger than the power of mind to empower our life. ANUJ SOMANY The woman power of this nation can be the power which makes us whole and heals the rotten community,... CORETTA SCOTT KING A Human Thought is an actual EXISTENCE, and a Force and Power, capable of acting upon and controllin... ALBERT PIKE The principles of the good society call for a concern with an order of being -- which cannot be prov... WALTER LIPPMANN Being an actor is a matter of choice that, above all, takes place at an existential level: either yo... GIAN MARIA VOLONTE Adapting to changes represents an important characteristic of human nature, essential for the develo... ERALDO BANOVAC I insist that there is nothing sacred in the life of an invader, and there is no valid principle of ... BENJAMIN TUCKER The Bible is the Chief moral cause of all that is good, and the best corrector of all that is evil, ... NOAH WEBSTER If we desire a society in which men are brothers, then we must act towards one another with brotherh... BAYARD RUSTIN No government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it. There is a remedy in human nature ... SAMUEL JOHNSON The passenger liner Ossifar Distana was one of the most luxurious of its kind in space anywhere. It ... CHRISTINA ENGELA Human rights commissions, as they are evolving, are an attack on our fundamental freedoms and the ba... STEPHEN HARPER I believe that the will of the people is resolved by a strong leadership. Even in a democratic socie... YITZHAK SHAMIR I do believe in the power of freedom. The power of freedom is the mightiest force of history. Once t... TSAKHIAGIIN ELBEGDORJ If I can draw the slightest smile across a single face obliterated by pain, in that act I will have ... CRAIG D. LOUNSBROUGH Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understandi... C. WRIGHT MILLS There is no force that can put an end to the human quest for freedom, and China will, in the end, be... LIU XIAOBO Here too, as in the Commune almost a century earlier, the struggle was articulated around the hope t... TOM MCDONOUGH We have the most complex society to ever exist in human history. We are the true melting pot of Amer... DAN WALTERS As an atheist, I am angry that we live in a society in which the plain truth cannot be spoken withou... SAM HARRIS I write that crime is an unlawful act of violence that can be committed by anyone, and that punishme... MAHBOD SERAJI The profound ability to use aural and written language has enabled our species to collectively explo... KATHERINE VUCICEVIC Human rights commissions, as they are evolving, are an attack o-n our fundamental freedoms and the b... STEPHEN HARPER The response of anybody interested in liberty is that we all have a say and the ability to have an a... SALMAN RUSHDIE The doubt has the mysterious power to bring out the hidden reality of life. ANUJ SOMANY Hey you the "Supreme Power Within Myself" uplift my soul that I make no more mistakes and patiently ... NEHA KOTHARI If you look at a stream or river and close your eyes it will be amazing the flow of ideas that will ... GARY F EVANS... The power of man;Man does not only have the power to accomplish great & unbelievable things in life,... DAVID ATTA (A.K.A DAVIED ATTLARS & MR DAIN) Acknowledge and express your mistakes so you can prove to yourself and others that you can learn and... SERGIO ORTIZ If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human ... HENRY A. WALLACE There is, in a competitive society, nobody who can exercise even a fraction of the power which a soc... FRIEDRICH AUGUST HAYEK What preoccupies us, then, is not God as a fact of nature, but as a fabrication useful for a God-fea... DANIEL J. BOORSTIN The human body and mind are tremendous forces that are continually amazing scientists and society. T... EVELYN GLENNIE Freedom means freedom from forces and circumstances which would turn man into a thing, which would i... ERIC HOFFER Freedom means freedom from forces and circumstances which would turn man into a thing, which would i... ERIC HOFFER The president is asserting an inherent constitutional authority in 'wartime' that allows him to igno... THOMAS MANN The Internet is just a bunch of servers and broadband cables and routers that traffic data around th... ADAM OSTROW Respect for the word - to employ it with scrupulous care and an incorruptible heartfelt love of trut... DAG HAMMARSKJOLD Ruskin believed that everyone had visual as well as verbal capacities that needed to be developed in... ROBERT HEWISON A society that does not use the intellectual power of its female population fully is not a wise soci... JOHANNA SIGUROARDOTTIR Every natural calamity that is reported across the world is more superior in power and by the amount... DEVASKI You should know as much as you can about the human species if you have a hand in designing human soc... FRANS DE WAAL The family is the first essential cell of human society. POPE JOHN XXIII In the East, the main object is to have a well-ordered society so that everybody can have maximum en... LEE KUAN YEW Literature is where I go to explore the highest and lowest places in human society and in the human ... SALMAN RUSHDIE The good, say the mystics of spirit, is God, a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man'... AYN RAND An open society is a society which allows its members the greatest possible degree of freedom in pur... GEORGE SOROS Capitalists desire purchasing power. Socialists lust for the power to plan society. Which is worse? A.E. SAMAAN To preserve the human race, it is now necessary to reorganize society. To this end, an Authority mus... GORE VIDAL The principles of the good society call for a concern with an order of being -- which cannot be prov... WALTER LIPPMANN I know of no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too desirous of e... SAM HARRIS I think... the history of civilization is an attempt to codify, classify and categorize aspects of h... TOM STOPPARD The fires that burn deep within our hearts, fueling our deepest loves are indestructible; the power ... SARA NILES The standup is quintessentially an American art form and is a form of political protest. There's a h... AZHAR USMAN Clearly, an open mind is a necessity when dealing with randomness. Popper believed that any idea of ... NASSIM NICHOLAS TALEB society’s structure created a conflict between the short-term interests of those in power, and the... JARED DIAMOND The evolution of humans can not only be seen as the grand total of their wars; it is also defined by... FRIEDRICH DURRENMATT In a world in which the common rule which binds and regulates what the general masses feel is underm... ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH It is the thesis of this book that society can only be understood through a study of the messages an... NORBERT WIENER Prosperity in human society is misunderstood. The difference between a rich and poor society is the ... NICK HANAUER History can predict nothing except that great changes in human relationships will never come about i... JOHAN HUIZINGA It is not systematic education which somehow molds society, but, on the contrary, society which, acc... PAULO FREIRE Never let the fear of failure be an excuse for not trying. Society tells us that to fail is the most... AMBER DECKERS We could live several lifetimes and never exhaust the power of our minds. DENIS HACHEY
More Wole Soyinka
The blatant aggressiveness of theocracies I find distressing, because I grew up when Christians, Mus... WOLE SOYINKA The scales of reckoning with mortality are never evenly weighted, alas, and thus it is on the should... WOLE SOYINKA History teaches us to beware of the excitation of the liberated and the injustices that often accomp... WOLE SOYINKA I love beauty. But I like the beauty accidentally, not dished up, served up on a platter. WOLE SOYINKA I found, when I left, that there were others who felt the same way. We'd meet, they'd come a... WOLE SOYINKA A tiger does not shout its tigritude, it acts. WOLE SOYINKA Each time I think I've created time for myself, along comes a throwback to disrupt my private sp... WOLE SOYINKA I am convinced that Nigeria would have been a more highly developed country without the oil. I wishe... WOLE SOYINKA My horizon on humanity is enlarged by reading the writers of poems, seeing a painting, listening to ... WOLE SOYINKA The hand that dips into the bottom of the pot will eat the biggest snail. WOLE SOYINKA Colonialism bred an innate arrogance, but when you undertake that sort of imperial adventure, that a... WOLE SOYINKA Looking at faces of people, one gets the feeling there's a lot of work to be done. WOLE SOYINKA The phenomenon of creativity, we know, is closely related to the ability to yoke together separate, ... WOLE SOYINKA Nigeria has had the misfortune - no, the fortune - of seeing the worst face of capitalism anywhere i... WOLE SOYINKA I don't know any other way to live but to wake up every day armed with my convictions, not yield... WOLE SOYINKA Under a dictatorship, a nation ceases to exist. All that remains is a fiefdom, a planet of slaves re... WOLE SOYINKA One has a responsibility to clean up one's space and make it livable as far as one's own res... WOLE SOYINKA You cannot live a normal existence if you haven't taken care of a problem that affects your life... WOLE SOYINKA Books and all forms of writing are terror to those who wish to suppress the truth. WOLE SOYINKA Rwanda, which is one of the younger independent states in Africa, must be regarded as a model of how... WOLE SOYINKA There is only one home to the life of a river-mussel; there is only one home to the life of a tortoi... WOLE SOYINKA Power is domination, control, and therefore a very selective form of truth which is a lie. WOLE SOYINKA Human life has meaning only to that degree and as long as it is lived in the service of humanity. WOLE SOYINKA The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny. WOLE SOYINKA I like my peace and quiet whenever I can grab it. WOLE SOYINKA The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism. WOLE SOYINKA I am a glutton for tranquility. WOLE SOYINKA And I believe that the best learning process of any kind of craft is just to look at the work of oth... WOLE SOYINKA Given the scale of trauma caused by the genocide, Rwanda has indicated that however thin the hope of... WOLE SOYINKA I'm not fond of biographies. I don't like writing about myself. WOLE SOYINKA See, even despite pious statements to the contrary, much of the industrialized world has not yet com... WOLE SOYINKA Some of the greatest uprisings and consequent civil wars in Mexico have centered squarely on the own... WOLE SOYINKA The Sudanese government has been playing games with the world, with the Africa Union, in particular,... WOLE SOYINKA A war, with its attendant human suffering, must, when that evil is unavoidable, be made to fragment ... WOLE SOYINKA One's own self-worth is tied to the worth of the community to which one belongs, which is intima... WOLE SOYINKA We live in a materialist world, and materialism appeals so strongly to humanity, no matter where. WOLE SOYINKA But theater, because of its nature, both text, images, multimedia effects, has a wider base of commu... WOLE SOYINKA All religions accept that there is something called 'criminality.' And criminality cannot be... WOLE SOYINKA An idyllic period of my existence was when I had a den attached to my home... a writing den, and no ... WOLE SOYINKA After the death of the sadistic dictator Gen. Sanni Abacha in 1998, Nigeria underwent a one-year tra... WOLE SOYINKA No writer has a right to make that much money. Indeed, without diabolical assistance, no writer can. WOLE SOYINKA But when you're deprived of it for a lengthy period then you value human companionship. But you ... WOLE SOYINKA Seven is the magic figure, because that's a symbolic figure of my favorite deity, Ogun. WOLE SOYINKA Probably to me the greatest singer, female voice, is Billie Holiday. And one of the most moving for ... WOLE SOYINKA England is the breeding ground of fundamentalist Muslims. Its social logic is to allow all religions... WOLE SOYINKA [It] takes a jaundiced view of the much-vaunted glorious past of Africa. And I suppose since then I'... WOLE SOYINKA It's the place to begin, always -- to return to home, literally. WOLE SOYINKA Obasanjo has openly endorsed violence as a means of governance, embraced and empowered individuals w... WOLE SOYINKA There is not a special imposition on writers to be activists. All that does is encourage writers to ... WOLE SOYINKA My understanding of the creative process is simply that all cultures and all concerns meet at a cert... WOLE SOYINKA Just like birds, hunters know no borders. WOLE SOYINKA Being the first black Nobel laureate, and the first African, the African world considered me persona... WOLE SOYINKA I have a kind of magnetic attraction to situations of violence. WOLE SOYINKA The Lagos of my childhood was a well-laid-out maritime city. WOLE SOYINKA A tiger doesn't proclaim his tigritude, he pounces WOLE SOYINKA Art is solace; art is vision, and when I pick up a literary work, I am a consumer of literature for ... WOLE SOYINKA One thing I can tell you is this, that I am not a methodical writer. WOLE SOYINKA There is something really horrific for any human being who feels he is being consumed by other peopl... WOLE SOYINKA I've done a lot of guerrilla theater in my time. WOLE SOYINKA We are moving towards a total mockery of constitutionalism. The president has crossed the line of po... WOLE SOYINKA Obasanjo has acted sufficiently against the constitution to warrant his impeachment. There is more t... WOLE SOYINKA My father used to tell me stories before I fell asleep. When the children would gather, at a certain... WOLE SOYINKA Suddenly the world has run amok and left you alone and sane behind WOLE SOYINKA an opportunity for Nigerian civic society, an opportunity for the Nigerian military, and an opportun... WOLE SOYINKA Let's say there are prospects for a new Nigeria, but I don't think we have a new Nigeria yet. WOLE SOYINKA Writing in certain environments carries with it an occupational risk. WOLE SOYINKA I like to say, 'I spend one-third of my time in Nigeria, one-third in Europe or America, and one... WOLE SOYINKA We Nigerians must reclaim our sovereignty, our civic entitlements. WOLE SOYINKA The writer is the visionary of his people... He anticipates, he warns. WOLE SOYINKA African film makers are scraping by on a mere pittance. WOLE SOYINKA The problem with literature, with writing, is that it works sometimes in terms of correction of soci... WOLE SOYINKA And gradually they're beginning to recognize the fact that there's nothing more secure than ... WOLE SOYINKA There's something about the theater which makes my fingertips tingle. WOLE SOYINKA There's a kind of dynamic quality about theater and that dynamic quality expresses itself in rel... WOLE SOYINKA I began writing early - very, very early... I was already writing short stories for the radio and se... WOLE SOYINKA My father was a schoolteacher, and so I had the advantage of both western educational instruction in... WOLE SOYINKA Power, of course. The primitive fear of being controlled. It does not matter whether it is an invasi... WOLE SOYINKA the very least we can live with is an agreement that does not reduce us to slaves of imposition, but... WOLE SOYINKA