Igbo Quotes & Sayings

We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own. The Igbo, always practical, put it concretely in their proverb Onye ji onye n'ani ji onwe ya: He who will hold another down in the mud must stay in the mud to keep him down. — Chinua Achebe

Please don't speak Igbo to him,' Aunty Uju said. 'Two languages will confuse him.'
'What are you talking about, Aunty? We spoke two languages growing up.'
'This is America. It's different. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Impossible," he said, and switched to Igbo. "Ama m atu inu. I even know proverbs." "Yes. The basic one everybody knows. A frog does not run in the afternoon for nothing." "No. I know serious proverbs. Akota ife ka ubi, e lee oba. If something bigger than the farm is dug up, the barn is sold." "Ah, you want to try me?" she asked, laughing. "Acho afu adi ako n'akpa dibia. The medicine man's bag has all kinds of things." "Not bad," he said. "E gbuo dike n'ogu uno, e luo na ogu agu, e lote ya. If you kill a warrior in a local fight, you'll remember him when fighting enemies. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

It was never a deliberate decision to make films about the 'woman experience'. Having said that, we are all many things - for example I'm Igbo and Nigerian, a director, a filmmaker etc., but I feel what affects me the most, especially the way people/society view or treat me, is the fact that I'm a woman, and I'm fascinated by that. — Chika Anadu

While my work is usually about the Igbo woman experience, there are many aspects of my female characters that women everywhere can and do relate to. — Chika Anadu

The Igbo nation in precolonial times was not quite like any nation most people are familiar with. It did not have the apparatus of centralized government but a conglomeration of hundreds of independent towns and villages each of which shared the running of its affairs among its menfolk according to title, age, occupation, etc.; and its women folk who had domestic responsibilities as well as the management of the scores of four-day and eight-day markets that bound the entire region and its neighbours in a network of daily exchange of goods and news, from far and near. — Chinua Achebe

The Igbo culture, being receptive to change, individualistic, and highly competitive, gave the Igbo man an unquestioned advantage over his compatriots in securing credentials for advancement in Nigerian colonial society. Unlike the Hausa/Fulani he was unhindered by a wary religion, and unlike the Yoruba he was unhampered by traditional hierarchies. This kind of creature, fearing no god or man, was custom-made to grasp the opportunities, such as they were, of the white man's dispensations. And — Chinua Achebe

I am saying that an Igbo man should be president in 2015. It matters where the president comes from, because all segment of the society had been president. People continue letting Ndigbo down because they think we were defeated during the war, which is not true. And until an Igbo man rules this country, the country will not move anywhere, — Orji Uzor Kalu

You are an Igbo woman and Igbo women are stronger than any form of pain. — S.A. David

I believe in the complexity of the human story and that there's no way you can tell that story in one way and say, This is it. Always there will be someone who can tell it differently depending on where they are standing; the same person telling the story will tell it differently. I think of that masquerade in Igbo festivals that dances in the public arena. The Igbo people say, If you want to see it well, you must not stand in one place. The masquerade is moving through this big arena. Dancing. If you're rooted to a spot, you miss a lot of the grace. So you keep moving, and this is the way I think the world's stories should be told - from many different perspectives. — Chinua Achebe

I am the daughter of Nigerian immigrants. My mother is a survivor of both polio and of the Igbo genocide during her country's civil war in the late 1960s. — Uzo Aduba

A horny Igbo girl's nipple can be used to crush diamond — Pete Edochie

- The Igbo are a very democratic people. The Igbo people expressed a strong antimonarchy sentiment - Ezebuilo - which literally means, a king is an enemy. Their culture illustrates a clear-cut opposition to kings, because, I think, the Igbo people had seen what the uncontrolled power of kings could do. — Chinua Achebe

I was not a tribalist when I had a long-standing and intimate relationship with Miss Bianca Onoh, an Igbo lady ... — Femi Fani-Kayode

When I was growing up in Nigeria - and I shouldn't say Nigeria, because that's too general, but in Afikpo, the Igbo part of the country where I'm from - there were always rites of passage for young men. Men were taught to be men in the ways in which we are not women; that's essentially what it is. — Chris Abani

My point is that the only authentic identity for the African is the tribe ... I am Nigerian because a white man created Nigeria and gave me that identity. I am black because the white man constructed black to be as different as possible from his white. But I was Igbo before the white man came. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The Igbo used to say that they built their own gods. They would come together as a community, and they would express a wish. And their wish would then be brought to a priest, who would find a ritual object, and the appropriate sacrifices would be made, and the shrine would be built for the god. — Chris Abani

Museums are unknown among the Igbo people. They do not even contemplate the idea of having something like a canon with the postulate: "This is how this sculpture should be made, and once it's made it should be venerated." No, the Igbo people want to create these things again and again, and every generation has a chance to execute its own model of art. So there's no undue respect for what the last generation did, because if you do that too much it means that there is no need for me to do anything, because it's already been done. — Chinua Achebe

A man with dry, graying skin and a mop of white hair came in with a plastic tray of herbal potions for sale. "No, no, no," Aisha said to him, palm raised as though to ward him off. The man retreated. Ifemelu felt sorry for him, hungry-looking in his worn dashiki, and wondered how much he could possibly make from his sales. She should have bought something. "You talk Igbo to Chijioke. He listen to you," Aisha said. "You talk Igbo?" "Of course I speak Igbo," Ifemelu said, defensive, wondering if Aisha was again suggesting that America had changed her. "Take it easy!" she added, because Aisha had pulled a tiny-toothed comb through a section of her hair. "Your hair hard," Aisha said. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Although Christianity had almost cleanly swept through Igbo land, crumbs and pieces of the African traditional religion had eluded the broom. — Chigozie Obioma

Take sleep mark death. — Glen L. Richards

Among the Igbo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten. — Chinua Achebe

The Igbo culture says no condition is permanent. There is constant change in the world. — Chinua Achebe