53 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Quotes (WRITER)

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Top 10 Most Famous Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Quotes (BEST)

Culture does not make people. People make culture. If the full humanity of women is not our **culture**, then we can and must make it our culture.

We should all be angry. Anger has a long history of bringing about positive change. — We should all be angry. Anger has a long history of bringing about positive **change**.

I think you travel to search and you come back ‘home’ to find yourself there. — I think you **travel** to search and you come back ‘home’ to find yourself there.

Your feminist premise should be I matter. I matter equally. Not 'if only.' Not 'as long as.' I matter equally. Full stop. — Your feminist premise should be: I matter. I matter equally. Not ‘if only.’ Not ‘as long as.’ I matter equally. Full stop.

This was love a string of coincidences that gathered significance and became miracles. — This was **love**: a string of coincidences that gathered significance and became **miracles**.

There are some things that are so unforgivable that they make other things easily forgivable. — There are some things that are so unforgivable that they make other things easily **forgivable**.

Stories can also be used to empower, and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people. But stories can also repair that broken dignity. — Stories can also be used to empower, and to humanize. Stories can break the **dignity** of a people. But stories can also repair that broken dignity.

Never ever accept ‘because you are a woman’ as a reason for doing or not doing anything.

For me, feminism is a movement for which the end goal is to make itself no longer needed.

I’ve always been the kind of person who thinks that men and women are equal, full stop.

5 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Quotes on Racism (EQUALITY)

Racism should never have happened and so you don't get a cookie for reducing it. — Racism should never have happened and so you don’t get a cookie for reducing it.

Race doesn't really exist for you because it has never been a barrier. Black folks don't have that choice. — Race doesn’t really exist for you because it has never been a barrier. Black folks don’t have that choice.

Because when there is true equality, resentment does not exist. — Because when there is true **equality**, **resentment** does not exist.

There are people who dislike you because you do not dislike yourself.

The manifestation of racism has changed but the language has not.

12 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Quotes on Feminism and Gender Expectations

“I don’t think of myself as a feminist activist… I think of myself fundamentally as a storyteller. I’m not a feminist activist; it’s not a label. I’m feminist, fiercely so. I will always be. I have always been.”
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The problem with gender is that it prescribes how we should be rather than recognizing how we are.

I have chosen to no longer be apologetic for my femaleness and my femininity. And I want to be respected in all of my femaleness because I deserve to be. — I have chosen to no longer be apologetic for my femaleness and my femininity. And I want to be **respected** in all of my femaleness because I deserve to be.

I am trying to unlearn many lessons of gender I internalized while growing up. But I sometimes still feel vulnerable in the face of gender expectations.

“We teach girls shame. ‘Close your legs. Cover yourself.’ We make them feel as though being born female they’re already guilty of something. And so, girls grow up to be women who cannot say they have desire. They grow up to be women who silence themselves. They grow up to be women who cannot say what they truly think. And they grow up — and this is the worst thing we do to girls — they grow up to be women who have turned pretense into an art form.”
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Imagine how much happier we would be, how much freer to be our true individual selves, if we didn’t have the weight of gender expectations. — Imagine how much **happier** we would be, how much freer to be our true individual selves, if we didn’t have the weight of gender expectations.

My own definition is a feminist is a man or a woman who says, ‘yes, there’s a problem with gender as it is today and we must fix it, we must do better.’

Feminism isn’t a cloak that I put on in the morning and take off at certain times. It’s who I am.

“Some people ask: ‘Why the word feminist? Why not just say you are a believer in human rights, or something like that?’ Because that would be… a way of pretending that it was not women who have, for centuries, been excluded. It would be a way of denying that the problem of gender targets women.”
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Women need to know that they matter. They matter equally.

Feminist: a person who believes in the social, political and economic equality of the sexes. — Feminist: a person who believes in the social, political and economic **equality** of the sexes.

I look at the world through eyes that are very alert to gender injustice, and I always will.

8 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Quotes on Marriage and Men

“A woman at a certain age who is unmarried, our society teaches her to see it as a deep personal failure. And a man, after a certain age isn’t married, we just think he hasn’t come around to making his pick.”
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Of course I am not worried about intimidating men. The type of man who will be intimidated by me is exactly the type of man I have no interest in.

Marriage can be a source of joy and love and mutual support but why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage and we don’t teach boys the same? — **Marriage** can be a source of joy and **love** and mutual support but why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage and we don’t teach boys the same?

Never speak of marriage as an achievement. — Never speak of **marriage** as an achievement.

“Then she wished, more rationally, that she could love him without needing him. Need gave him power without his trying; need was the choicelessness she often felt around him.”
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

You must never behave as if your life belongs to a man. Do you hear me Your life belongs to you and you alone. — You must never behave as if your **life** belongs to a man. Do you hear me? Your life belongs to you and you alone.

Masculinity is a hard, small cage, and we put boys inside this cage.

I know I’m able to have empathy for men who have been assaulted, who’ve suffered. I don’t need to imagine that they’re my brother or my husband. — I know I’m able to have **empathy** for men who have been assaulted, who’ve suffered. I don’t need to imagine that they’re my brother or my husband.

3 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Quotes on Africa

“If I were not African, I wonder whether it would be clear to me that Africa is a place where the people do not need limp gifts of fish but sturdy fishing rods and fair access to the pond. I wonder whether I would realize that while African nations have a failure of leadership, they also have dynamic people with agency and voices.”
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

You have to do more than go there and adopt a child or show us pictures of children with flies in their eyes. That simplifies Africa. — You have to do more than go there and adopt a child or show us pictures of **children** with flies in their eyes. That simplifies Africa.

“I recently spoke at a university where a student told me it was such a shame that Nigerian men were physical abusers like the father character in my novel. I told him that I had recently read a novel called American Psycho, and that it was a shame that young Americans were serial murderers.”
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

9 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Quotes that will Make You Think (ONE THING)

“If you don’t understand, ask questions. If you’re uncomfortable about asking questions, say you are uncomfortable about asking questions and then ask anyway. It’s easy to tell when a question is coming from a good place. Then listen some more. Sometimes people just want to feel heard. Here’s to possibilities of friendship and connection and understanding.”
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Show a people as one thing, only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become.

The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete.

Teach her that if you criticize X in women but do not criticize X in men, then you do not have a problem with X, you have a problem with women.

“It is easy to romanticize poverty, to see poor people as inherently lacking agency and will. It is easy to strip them of human dignity, to reduce them to objects of pity.”
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie