The Wretched Of The Earth Quotes
"The colonized, underdeveloped man is a political creature in the most global sense of the term." - Frantz Fanon
"A colonized person must constantly be aware of his image, jealously protect his position, Fanon said to Sartre."
"The oppressed discover the enduring strength to found a free and just society, a national consciousness, if they are continuously aware of their own anxiety and fragility." - Homi K. Bhabha on Fanon
"Europe has gained such a mad and reckless momentum that it is heading toward the brink from which we would be advised to remove ourselves." - Frantz Fanon
"The true culture is the revolution, meaning it is forged while the iron is hot." - Frantz Fanon
"The colonized does not accept his guilt, but rather considers it a kind of curse, a sword of Damocles." - Frantz Fanon
"Our Machiavellianism has little hold on this world, which is wide awake and hot on the trail of every one of our lies." - Frantz Fanon
"Each generation must discover its mission, fulfill it or betray it, in relative opacity." - Frantz Fanon
"The wretched of the earth are still with us." - David Macey
"Demanding yet denying the human condition makes for an explosive contradiction." - Frantz Fanon
"Violence alone can eliminate [the marks of violence]. And the colonized are cured of colonial neurosis by driving the colonist out by force."
"When the peasants lay hands on a gun, the old myths fade, and one by one the taboos are overturned: a fighter’s weapon is his humanity."
"The pacifists are a fine sight: neither victims nor torturers! Come now! If you are not a victim when the government you voted for commits 'genocide', then, you are undoubtedly a torturer."
"Violence, like Achilles’ spear, can heal the wounds it has inflicted."
"National liberation, national reawakening, restoration of the nation to the people or Commonwealth, whatever the name used, decolonization is always a violent event."
"The colonized man is an envious man. The colonist is aware of this as he catches the furtive glance, and constantly on his guard, realizes bitterly that: 'They want to take our place.'"
"The colonized world is a world divided in two. The dividing line, the border, is represented by the barracks and the police stations."
"In the colonies, the official, legitimate agent, the spokesperson for the colonizer and the regime of oppression, is the police officer or the soldier."
"The colonized subject is a man penned in; apartheid is but one method of compartmentalizing the colonial world."
"The colonized subject will first train this aggressiveness sedimented in his muscles against his own people."
"During colonization the colonized subject frees himself night after night between nine in the evening and six in the morning."
"This atmosphere of violence affects not just the colonized but also the colonizers who realize the number of latent Dien Bien Phu’s."
"In the colonial world, the colonized’s affectivity is kept on edge like a running sore flinching from a caustic agent."
"The colonized subject discovers that his life, his breathing and his heartbeats are the same as the colonist’s."
"The colonial context is characterized by the dichotomy it inflicts on the world. Decolonization unifies this world by a radical decision to remove its heterogeneity, by unifying it on the grounds of nation and sometimes race."
"Neutrality produces in the citizen of the Third World an attitude of mind which translates in everyday life to a brazenness and hieratic pride strangely resembling an act of defiance."
"These countries without urban transportation, without troops, and without money cannot justify flaunting such bravado."
"The existence of an armed struggle is indicative that the people are determined to put their faith only in violent methods."
"The colonial regime owes its legitimacy to force and at no time does it ever endeavor to cover up this nature of things."
"For the colonized, this violence represents the absolute praxis."
"To work means to work towards the death of the colonist."
"Violence can thus be understood to be the perfect mediation."
"The violence of the colonial regime and the counterviolence of the colonized balance each other and respond to each other in an extraordinary reciprocal homogeneity."
"The arrival of the colonist signified syncretically the death of indigenous society, cultural lethargy, and petrifaction of the individual."
"For the colonized, life can only materialize from the rotting cadaver of the colonist."
"This violent praxis is totalizing since each individual represents a violent link in the great chain, in the almighty body of violence rearing up in reaction to the primary violence of the colonizer."
"The European nations achieved their national unity at a time when the national bourgeoisies had concentrated most of the wealth in their own hands."
"Europe’s well-being and progress were built with the sweat and corpses of blacks, Arabs, Indians, and Asians."
"The truth is we must not accept such conditions. We must refuse outright the situation to which the West wants to condemn us."
"The colonialist secret service, which is still at work after independence, foments discontent and still manages to create serious difficulties for the young governments."
"The national liberation army is not an army grappling with the enemy in a single, decisive battle, but travels from village to village, retreating into the forest and jumping for joy when the cloud of dust raised by the enemy’s troops is seen in the valley."
"The enemy who analyzes the forces of the insurrection, who delves deeper and deeper into the study of that global adversary, the colonized subject, identifies the ideological weakness and spiritual instability of certain segments of the population."
"The colonized must be made to see that colonialism never gives away anything for nothing."
"The duty of a leadership is to have the masses on their side."
"Any commitment, however, presupposes awareness and understanding of the mission to be accomplished, in short a rational analysis, no matter how embryonic."
"The duty of a leadership is to have the masses on their side. Any commitment, however, presupposes awareness and understanding of the mission to be accomplished, in short a rational analysis, no matter how embryonic."
"To politicize the masses is to make the nation in its totality a reality for every citizen."
"In the realm of thought, man can claim to be the brain of the world, but in reality, where every action affects spiritual and physical being, the world is still the brain of mankind."
"Since individual experience is national, since it is a link in the national chain, it ceases to be individual, narrow and limited in scope, and can lead to the truth of the nation and the world."
"The bridge must not be pitchforked or foisted upon the social landscape by a deus ex machina, but, on the contrary, must be the product of the citizens’ brains and muscles."
"The soldier in a mature nation is not a mercenary but a citizen who defends the nation by the use of arms."
"National service can be civilian or military, and in any case every able-bodied citizen should be able to join his fighting unit at a moment’s notice to defend the freedom of the nation and its civil liberties."
"The major public works projects of national interest should be carried out by the recruits."
"If we really want to safeguard our countries from regression, paralysis, or collapse, we must rapidly switch from a national consciousness to a social and political consciousness."
"The living expression of the nation is the collective consciousness in motion of the entire people."
"It is not enough to write a revolutionary hymn to be a part of the African revolution, one has to join with the people to make this revolution."
"Colonialism attempts to defuse nationalist demands by manipulating economic doctrine."
"Colonialism is not satisfied with snaring the people in its net or of draining the colonized brain of any form or substance. With a kind of perverted logic, it turns its attention to the past of the colonized people and distorts it, disfigures it, and destroys it."
"The colonized who are concerned for their country’s culture and wish to give it a universal dimension should not place their trust in a single principle—that independence is inevitable and automatically inscribed in the people’s consciousness."
"In a colonized country, nationalism in its most basic, most rudimentary, and undifferentiated form is the most forceful and effective way of defending national culture."
"Violence is a cleansing force. It rids the colonized of their inferiority complex, of their passive and despairing attitude. It emboldens them and restores their self-confidence."
"The bourgeoisie in Africa still unreservedly and enthusiastically adopt the thinking mechanisms characteristic of the West, still has alienated to perfection its own thoughts and grounded its consciousness in typically foreign notions, still turns its back on the majority of its population."
"Translating a dead man means stepping very warily through a minefield littered with the debris of another time and another translation."
"Perhaps only a French Caribbean, in other words one so destitute, so depersonalized could have set off with such determination to conquer himself and plenitude."
"The creation of these militias clearly means hands off HIS war. It is proof there are no limits once the rot has set in."
"The tasks for the French army are infinite because the unity of the Algerian people is infinite, O so infinite!"