The foreign correspondent is frequently the only means of getting an important story told, or of drawing the world's attention to disasters in the making or being covered up. Such an important role is risky in more ways than one. It can expose the correspondent to actual physical danger; but there is also the moral danger of indulging in sensationalism and dehumanizing the sufferer. This danger immediately raises the question of the character and attitude of the correspondent, because the same qualities of mind which in the past separated a Conrad from a Livingstone, or a Gainsborough from the anonymous painter of Francis Williams, are still present and active in the world today. Perhaps this difference can best be put in one phrase: the presence or absence of respect for the human person.

The foreign correspondent is frequently the only means of getting an important story told, or of drawing the world's attention to disasters in the making or being covered up. Such an important role is risky in more ways than one. It can expose the correspondent to actual physical danger; but there is also the moral danger of indulging in sensationalism and dehumanizing the sufferer. This danger immediately raises the question of the character and attitude of the correspondent, because the same qualities of mind which in the past separated a Conrad from a Livingstone, or a Gainsborough from the anonymous painter of Francis Williams, are still present and active in the world today. Perhaps this difference can best be put in one phrase: the presence or absence of respect for the human person.

Chinua Achebe
Save QuoteView Quote
Similar Quotes by chinua-achebe

Each of my books is different. Deliberately... I wanted to create my society, my people, in their fullness.

Chinua Achebe
Save QuoteView Quote

I liked Yeats! That wild Irishman. I really loved his love of language, his flow. His chaotic ideas seemed to me just the right thing for a poet. Passion! He was always on the right side. He may be wrongheaded, but his heart was always on the right side. He wrote beautiful poetry.

Chinua Achebe
Save QuoteView Quote

But I liked Yeats! That wild Irishman. I really loved his love of language, his flow. His chaotic ideas seemed to me just the right thing for a poet. Passion! He was always on the right side. He may be wrongheaded, but his heart was always on the right side. He wrote beautiful poetry.

Chinua Achebe
Save QuoteView Quote

The relationship with my people, the Nigerian people, is very good. My relationship with the rulers has always been problematic.

Chinua Achebe
Save QuoteView Quote

The problem with leaderless uprisings taking over is that you don't always know what you get at the other end. If you are not careful you could replace a bad government with one much worse!

Chinua Achebe
Save QuoteView Quote

A functioning, robust democracy requires a healthy educated, participatory followership, and an educated, morally grounded leadership.

Chinua Achebe
Save QuoteView Quote

The only thing we have learnt from experience is that we learn nothing from experience.

Chinua Achebe
Save QuoteView Quote

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

Chinua Achebe
Save QuoteView Quote

People from different parts of the world can respond to the same story if it says something to them about their own history and their own experience.

Chinua Achebe
Save QuoteView Quote

In fact, I thought that Christianity was very a good and a very valuable thing for us. But after a while, I began to feel that the story that I was told about this religion wasn't perhaps completely whole, that something was left out.

Chinua Achebe
Save QuoteView Quote
Related Topics to chinua-achebe Quotes