Frantz Fanon
For the black man there is only one destiny. And it is white.
Violence is man re-creating himself.
He who is reluctant to recognize me opposes me.
I ascribe a basic importance to the phenomenon of language. To speak means to be in a position to use a certain syntax, to grasp the morphology of this or that language, but it means above all to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization.
Fervor is the weapon of choice of the impotent.
However painful it may be for me to accept this conclusion, I am obliged to state it: for the black man there is only one destiny. And it is white.
There is a point at which methods devour themselves.
Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief.Collection: Faith
Imperialism leaves behind germs of rot which we must clinically detect and remove from our land but from our minds as well.Collection: Land
Violence is a cleansing force. It frees the native from his inferiority complex and from his despair and inaction; it makes him fearless and restores his self-respectCollection: Self
To educate the masses politically does not mean, cannot mean, making a political speech. What it means is to try, relentlessly and passionately, to teach the masses that everything depends on them; that if we stagnate it is their responsibility, and that if we go forward it is due to them too, that there is no such thing as a demiurge, that there is no famous man who will take the responsibility for everything, but that the demiurge is the people themselves and the magic hands are finally only the hands of the people.Collection: Mean
Wealth is not the fruit of labor but the result of organized protected robbery.Collection: Fruit
When we revolt it’s not for a particular culture. We revolt simply because, for many reasons, we can no longer breathe.Collection: Culture
Each generation must discover its mission, fulfill it or betray it, in relative opacity.Collection: Generations
What matters is not to know the world but to change it.Collection: What Matters
Every colonized people-in other words, every people in whose soul an inferiority complex has been created by the death and burial of its local cultural originality-finds itself face to face with the language of the civilizing nation; that is, with the culture of the mother country. The colonized is elevated above his jungle status in proportion to his adoption of the mother country's cultural standards.Collection: Country
I am black; I am in total fusion with the world, in sympathetic affinity with the earth, losing my id in the heart of the cosmos -- and the white man, however intelligent he may be, is incapable of understanding Louis Armstrong or songs from the Congo. I am black, not because of a curse, but because my skin has been able to capture all the cosmic effluvia. I am truly a drop of sun under the earth.Collection: Song
The oppressed will always believe the worst about themselves.Collection: Believe
If the building of a bridge does not enrich the awareness of those who work on it, then the bridge ought not to be built.Collection: Bridges
The unpreparedness of the educated classes, the lack of practical links between them and the mass of the people, their laziness, and, let it be said, their cowardice at the decisive moment of the struggle will give rise to tragic mishaps.Collection: Struggle
A government or a party gets the people it deserves and sooner or later a people gets the government it deserves.Collection: Party
In the World through which I travel, I am endlessly creating myself.Collection: Creating
National liberation, national renaissance, the restoration of nationhood to the people, commonwealth: whatever may be the headings used or the new formulas introduced, decolonization is always a violent phenomenon.Collection: People
For a colonized people the most essential value, because the most concrete, is first and foremost the land: the land which will bring them bread and, above all, dignity.Collection: Land
I came into this world anxious to uncover the meaning of things, my soul desirous to be at origin of the world, and here I am an object among other objects.Collection: Here I Am
The native must realize that colonialism never gives anything away for nothing.Collection: Giving
The Negro enslaved by his inferiority, the white man enslaved by his superiority alike behave in accordance with a neurotic orientation.Collection: Men
The basic confrontation which seemed to be colonialism versus anti-colonialism, indeed capitalism versus socialism, is already losing its importance. What matters today, the issue which blocks the horizon, is the need for a redistribution of wealth. Humanity will have to address this question, no matter how devastating the consequences may be.Collection: Block
And it is clear that in the colonial countries the peasants alone are revolutionary, for they have nothing to lose and everything to gain. The starving peasant, outside the class system is the first among the exploited to discover that only violence pays. For him there is no compromise, no possible coming to terms; colonization and decolonization a simply a question of relative strength.Collection: Country
Mastery of language affords remarkable power.Collection: Mastery
They realize at last that change does not mean reform, that change does not mean improvement.Collection: Mean
I want the world to recognize with me the open door of every consciousnessCollection: Doors
Every race will have disagreements amongst themselves, but we must put aside our differences, and work together for the advancement of that race" Sandra ForsytheCollection: Race
My intimate knowledge of many central African tribes has everywhere convinced me of the necessity that the Negro does not respect treaties but only brute force.”• General Adrian Dietrich Lothar von Trotha on German South West Africa “At the level of individuals, violence is a cleansing force. It frees the native from his inferiority complex and from his despair and inaction, it makes him fearless and restores his self-respect.Collection: Self
One avoids Creolisms. Some families completely forbid Creole and mothers ridicule their children for speaking it.Collection: Mother
For the beloved should not allow me to turn my infantile fantasies into reality: On the contrary, he should help me to go beyond them.Collection: Reality
Two centuries ago, a former European colony decided to catch up with Europe. It succeeded so well that the United States of America became a monster, in which the taints, the sickness and the inhumanity of Europe have grown to appalling dimensionsCollection: Europe
The business of obscuring language is a mask behind which stands the much bigger business of plunder.Collection: Evil
Get used to me, I am not getting used to anyone.Collection: Used
Everything can be explained to the people, on the single condition that you want them to understand.Collection: People
A man who has a language consequently possesses the world expressed and implied by that language.Collection: Men
...There are too many idiots in this world. And having said it, I have the burden of proving it.Collection: World
We believe that an individual must endeavor to assume the universalism inherent in the human condition.Collection: Believe
O my body, make of me always a man who questions!Collection: Men
In the colonial context the settler only ends his work of breaking in the native when the latter admits loudly and intelligibly the supremacy of the white man's values.Collection: Men
Culture has never the translucidity of custom; it abhors all simplification. In its essence it is opposed to custom, for custom is always the deterioration of culture.Collection: Essence
The Church in the colonies is the white people's Church, the foreigner's Church. She does not call the native to God's ways but to the ways of the white man, of the master, of the oppressor.Collection: Men
To educate the masses politically is to make the totality of the nation a reality to each citizen. It is to make the history of the nation part of the personal experience of each of its citizens.Collection: Reality
When people like me, they like me "in spite of my color." When they dislike me; they point out that it isn't because of my color. Either way, I am locked in to the infernal circle.Collection: Color
The settler makes history and is conscious of making it. And because he constantly refers to the history of his mother country, he clearly indicates that he himself is the extension of that mother country. Thus the history which he writes is not the history of the country which he plunders but the history of his own nation in regard to all that she skims off, all that she violates and starves.Collection: Country