Daily Inspiration Quote by Wole Soyinka

Power, in Soyinka's framing, is less a throne than a soundstage: it manufactures reality by narrowing what can be said, seen, and safely believed. The sting is in that phrase "selective form of truth" - a truth that doesn't persuade through evidence so much as through exclusion. Control isn't only the policeman's baton or the censor's red pen; it's the quieter domination of agenda-setting, the decision about which facts get oxygen and which are left to suffocate offstage. When only certain truths are permitted to circulate, "truth" becomes a curated exhibit, and the curation is the lie.

As a dramatist, Soyinka understands that authority is theatrical. Regimes don't just rule; they stage. They need scripts (official histories), props (statistics, slogans, televised rituals), and a disciplined cast (bureaucrats, compliant media, frightened citizens). The audience is asked to confuse repetition for reality. Domination works best when it can claim moral clarity: the lie dressed in the costume of necessity, security, or national destiny.

The context matters: Soyinka's career is threaded through Nigeria's postcolonial upheavals, civil conflict, military dictatorships, and his own imprisonment. He writes from a world where "truth" has often been an administrative category - what the state will tolerate today - rather than a shared public good. That makes the line less philosophical than diagnostic. It warns that the most dangerous deception isn't an outright falsehood; it's the truth trimmed to fit power's needs, until it becomes indistinguishable from propaganda.