FastSaying

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


Wole Soyinka

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GARY F EVANS... We can leave a place behind, or we can stay in that place and leave our selfishness (often expressed...
JOHN H. GROBERG Now is the only time we have, and the only time that we have any control over.
RICHARD CARLSON We fall back into the past, we jump ahead into the future, and in this we lose our entire lives.
THICH NHAT HANH I suggest you keep your distance from her and concentrate on your own work.”
“I’m in lov...
ERIN MORGENSTERN No one should let yesterday use up too much of today. Easy to say, hard to live.
ANDREA HAIRSTON It may be the kind where, at the age of thirty, you sit in some bar hating everybody who comes in lo...
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GABRIEL GARCíA MáRQUEZ The man who dies rich dies disgraced
ANDREW CARNEGIE I have always wished the present to resemble memory: because the present can be flat at times, and b...
LYDIA MILLET The fire of hope never dies.
BEN OAK You deserve to be with somebody, who knows you're the one, from that very first moment he lays eyes ...
C. JOYBELL C. No, of course not. But surely you know your affair couldn't go on forever."
"Forever has no mea...
ELLEN HOPKINS A perfectly decent fellow may be driven by circumstances to commit a crime and if he's found out he'...
W.SOMERSET MAUGHAM Let me repeat. I have not read all the work of this present generation of writing. I have not had ti...
WILLIAM FAULKNER I hate saying corny things like "traveling incognito." But when I'm with somebody that's corny, I al...
J.D. SALINGER “Love is not to be discovered but felt.It is brewing in air across universe.One needs only open ey...
ANUJ SOMANY I promise myself that I will enjoy every minute of the day that is given me to live.
THICH NHAT HANH You can't go back to how things were. How you thought they were. All you really have is...now.
JAY ASHER Life is a journey, not a destination.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON It is so torturous to be in the crowd not only because the voice there is usually loud, but also oft...
ANUJ SOMANY When you grow up there are things that you would love to do make your father proud is one and have f...
GARY F EVANS... It seems like all the best people have all the worst habits.
THOMAS WALLACE SCHERZER A person who lives truly in present time is dependent on oneself only not on sycophants’ people.
ANUJ SOMANY I had a best friend once 20 years down the line a friendship that you just do not get now, i regarde...
GARY F EVANS... Tongues are a miraculous manifestations of being filled with the Holy Ghost.
PST ADELAJA SUNDAY The Buddha told him, "When we sit, we know we are sitting. When we walk, we know we are walking. Whe...
THICH NHAT HANH She plucked the blossoms from the bag and arranged them, one by one, in the water glass on her dress...
SARAH JIO Tomorrow is tomorrow.
Future cares have future cures,
And we must mind today.
SOPHOCLES To him, even the momentary was momentous.
G.K. CHESTERTON ‎You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest that it leaves your arms too full to embrace the...
JAN GLIDEWELL I’m pretty sure there are some things in the dark that we’re not meant to see.
KARINA HALLE I know,” said November. He was pale and thin lipped. He helped October out of the wooden chair. �...
NEIL GAIMAN To get over the past, you first have to accept that the past is over. No matter how many times you r...
MANDY HALE I'm the rose within the concrete that simulates the struggle, yet the blossom reveals defeat.
THE WRITTEN FACE The mark of a real man, is a man who can allow himself to fall deeply in love with a woman. But the ...
C. JOYBELL C. There is no such thing as objectivity. We are all just interpreting signals from the universe and tr...
BONES THE DOCTOR IN THE PHOTO Art must be parochial in the beginning to be cosmopolitan in the end.
GEORGE A. MOORE Life begins somewhere and ends somewhere with time but to get somewhere with the life you have depen...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH That’s what I liked about those nuns. You could tell, for one thing, that they never went anywhere...
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RICHARD CARLSON You've never really trusted him, though you don't understand why. Something about the fact that he's...
N.K. JEMISIN Sometimes people don’t understand
the promises they’re making when they make them,” I sai...
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OLIVIA SUDJIC God is not impressed with what PRECEDES your name, but how you PROCEED in His Name."
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GRAEME SIMSION All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
EDMUND BURKE All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to = remain silent.
THOMAS JEFFERSON When you live in the present, the past is forgotten & the future takes care of itself.
MANDY HALE When life gives you lemons, say cool, what else you got?
CARMEN IN THE SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELING PANTS All believers are members of the same body and should be viewed and treated that way.
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KARON WADDELL Pretending something doesn't matter doesn't make it matter less.
JENNIFER LYNN BARNES Not," Swift said firmly, "for all the tea in China."
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JAMES JOYCE All the things that are in the past are in the past.
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JOHN GREEN What day is it?"
It's today," squeaked Piglet.
My favorite day," said Pooh.
A.A. MILNE And let me tell you something else, my friend," she said in the precise enunciation of a trained nur...
JAMES JONES Be present in all things and thankful for all things.
MAYA ANGELOU Look at everything always as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time: Thus is yo...
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ALBERT EINSTEIN The only way to survive eternity is to be able to appreciate each moment.
LAUREN KATE Better to play dumb than to go as smartass… after all smartasses get what they deserve in the end....
DEYTH BANGER Things were a little untidy, but what did that matter? It was possible to become the slave of things...
ELIZABETH VON ARNIM Live today. Not yesterday. Not tomorrow. Just today. Inhabit your moments. Don't rent them out to to...
JERRY SPINELLI How can something feel so crucial in the moment and then seem completely trivial after the fact?
PAULA STOKES There's no sustenance in the past.
VIOLETTE LEDUC Mindfulness is like that—it is the miracle which can call back in a flash our dispersed mind and r...
THICH NHAT HANH To live in the present, you need to act or accept but never stay stuck.
JOHN KUYPERS Wow,” I said. “Are you making this up?”
“Hazel Grace, could I, with my meager intellect...
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JOHN GREEN We were sitting there on the couch together, and he pushed himself up to go but then fell back down ...
JOHN GREEN So it’s your death suit.”
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“Hazel Grace. No. I will gran...
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JOHN GREEN If he is anything other than a total gentleman, I’m going to gouge his eyes out.”
“So you...
JOHN GREEN People always get used to beauty, though.”
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JOHN GREEN Augustus: “You probably need some rest.”
Me: “I’m okay.”
Augustus: “Okay.” (...
JOHN GREEN Time's a slut, she screws with everyone.
JOHN GREEN como toda pregunta sobre el universo, esta vía de investigación nos obliga inevitablemente a pregu...
J.K. ROWLING No puedes escoger si serás lastimado en este mundo, pero si puedes decidir quién te lastima
JOHN GREEN But it's your life.
JOHN GREEN No matter how hard you kick, no matter how high you get, you can't go all the way round.
JOHN GREEN Cancer kids are essentially side effects of the relentless mutation that made the diversity of life ...
JOHN GREEN No puedes elegir si van hacerte daño en este mundo, pero sí eliges quién te lo hace.
JOHN GREEN

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 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 Well, the first thing is that truth and power for me form an antithesis, an antagonism, which will h...
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