Nigeria has had a complicated colonial history. My work has examined that part of our story extensively.

In dealing with a man who thinks you are a fool, it is good sometimes to remind him that you know what he knows but have chosen to appear foolish for the sake of peace.

There is that great proverb — that until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.

Nobody can teach me who I am. You can describe parts of me, but who I am - and what I need - is something I have to find out myself.

People say that if you find water rising up to your ankle, that's the time to do something about it, not when it's around your neck.

Become familiar with your home, but know also about your neighbors. The young man who never went anywhere thinks his mother is the greatest cook.

The damage done in one year can sometimes take ten or twenty years to repair.

When brothers fight to death a stranger inherit their father’s estate

If you only hear one side of the story, you have no understanding at all.

One of the truest tests of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised.

As long as one people sit on another and are deaf to their cry, so long will understanding and peace elude all of us.

A man can only rise, conquer, and achieve by lifting up his thoughts.

Sometimes we forget that the top of the wave, the top of the crest is always the bottom, there is no inside without an outside, and there is no up without a down.

We can't all be Einstein (because we don't all play the violin). At the very least, we need a sort of street-smart science: the ability to recognize evidence, gather it, assess it, and act on it.

Humor and knowledge are the two great hopes of our culture.

I developed osteoporosis of the personality. My thought processes became brittle.

But if you constantly insist only on your own interpretation, it isn't long before it seems patronizing.

Politics inflame the passions in a way that few beloveds can match.

Science is wisdom reduced to practice.

Through many afflictions we must enter into the kingdom of God ... It is folly to think to steal to heaven with a whole skin.

If you wants to get elected president, you'se got to think up some memoraboble homily so's school kids can be pestered into memorizin' it, even if they don't know what it means.