Ngugi wa Thiong'o Quotes on Knowledge
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (b. 1938) is the Kenyan novelist and theorist whose Decolonising the Mind (1986) gives the canonical statement of the case that genuine African knowledge cannot be produced in the colonial languages alone. The argument is that language is not a neutral instrument but the carrier of the conceptual and affective inheritance of a culture, and that the post-independence persistence of English and French as the languages of education and of high culture in Africa constitutes a continuing colonization of the cognitive ground itself. Globalectics (2012) extends the framework to a world-literary ecology built on the recovery of marginalized epistemic traditions.
Quotes
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Attributed to Ngugi wa Thiong'o:
“Language is not just a tool of communication; it is also a carrier of culture.”
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Attributed to Ngugi wa Thiong'o:
“The African writer must reclaim the African languages.”
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Attributed to Ngugi wa Thiong'o:
“The harvest of speaking is reading; the harvest of reading is more speaking.”
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“Our fathers fought bravely. But do you know the biggest weapon unleashed by the enemy against them? It was not the Maxim gun. It was division among them. Why? Because a people united in faith are stronger than the bomb.”
Wikiquote -
“The Whiteman told of another country beyond the sea where a powerful woman sat on a throne while men and women danced under the shadow of her authority and benevolence. She was ready to spread the shadow to cover the Agikuyu. They laughed at this eccentric man whose skin had been so scalded that the black outside had peeled off. The hot water must have gone into his head.”
Wikiquote -
“The Whiteman told of another country beyond the sea where a powerful woman sat on a throne while men and women danced under the shadow of her authority and benevolence. She was ready to spread the shadow to cover the Agikuyu. They laughed at this eccentric man whose skin had been so scalded that the black outside had peeled off. The hot water must have gone into his head.”
Wikiquote -
“As long as he did not know the truth, he could interpret the story in the only way that gave him hope: the coming of black rule would not mean, could never mean the end of white power.”
Wikiquote -
“The whiteman told of another country beyond the sea where a powerful woman sat on a throne while men and women danced under the shadow of her authority and benevolence. She was ready to spread the shadow to cover the [Gikuyu]. They laughed at this eccentric man whose skin had been so scalded that the black outside had peeled off.”
Chapter 2 -
“They looked beyond the laughing face of the whiteman and suddenly saw a long line of other red strangers who carried not the Bible, but the sword. […] The iron snake […] was quickly wriggling towards Nairobi for a thorough exploitation of the hinterland.”
Chapter 2 -
“[Mugo] had always found it difficult to make decisions. Recoiling as if by instinct from setting in motion a course of action whose consequences he could not determine before the start, he allowed himself to drift into things or be pushed into them by an uncanny demon; he rode on the wave of circumstance and lay against the crest, fearing but fascinated by fate.”
Chapter 3 -
“At Githima, people believed that a complaint from [Karanja] was enough to make a man lose his job. Karanja knew their fears. Often when men came into his office, he would suddenly cast them a cold eye, drop hints, or simply growl at them; in this way, he increased their fears and insecurity. But he also feared the men and alternated this fierce prose with servile friendliness.”
Chapter 4