Ayi Kwei Armah Quotes (1939-)

“Of unconnected consciousness is there more to say beyond the clear recognition this is destruction's keenest tool against the soul?”

“Alone, i am nothing. i have nothing.we have power.but we will never know it,we will never see it work.unless we come together to make it work.”

“Vagina sweet, money sweet pass all, who born fool socialism chop make chop country broke you broken not so? Pray for detention jail man chop free”

“Alone I can nothing,I have nothing.we have power but we will never see it work,unless we choose to come together to make it work let us come together”

“Words are mere wind, but wind too has always been part of our work, this work of sowers for the future, the work of story-tellers, the work of masters in the arts of eloquence.”

“Here, educated people use their intelligence to avoid risk, to accumulate power, money, privilege. We call it security. That makes our choices sound less cowardly, not so greedy”

“He seemed to have no weight at all. There he was winning prizes, playing for the school team, starting a study group. Yet he drew no feeling of importance from anything he did. He floated”

“Changes that seem reasonable, natural and basic," Armah says, "the academic world, far from performing as the rational part of a confused universe, seemed peculiarly denatured in its own right”

“A people losing sight of origins are dead. A people deaf to purposes are lost. Under fertile rain, in scorching sunshine there is no difference: their bodies are mere corpses, awaiting final burial.”

“Disgust with injustice may sharpen the desire for justice. Readers who don’t see this connection merely wish to be entertained, and I have neither skill nor desire to turn the agony of a people into entertainment.”

“I know people who won more than Five hundred cedis last year they still haven't got their money. I hope some officials at the lottery place will take some of my hundred cedis as a bribe and allow me to have the rest.”

“If we do not help the whites, we shall be left by the roadside. And if we are such fools as to stand against the whites, they will grind us till we become less than impotent, less than grains of bad snuff tossing in a storm.”