Frantz Fanon

“The white man is sealed in his whiteness. The black man in his blackness.”

“Imperialism leaves behind germs of rot which we must clinically detect and remove from our land but from our minds as well.”

“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.”

“Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it.”

“The oppressed will always believe the worst about themselves.”

“To speak is to exist for the other.”

“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.”

“What matters is not to know the world but to change it.”

“When we revolt it’s not for a particular culture. We revolt simply because, for many reasons, we can no longer breathe.”

“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.”

“Mastery of language affords remarkable power.”

“The native is an oppressed person whose permanent dream is to become the persecutor.”

“I am not a prisoner of history. I should not seek there for the meaning of my destiny.”

“The real ‘leap’ consists in introducing invention into existence.”

“The unpreparedness of the educated classes... their cowardice at the decisive moment of the struggle will give rise to tragic mishaps.”

“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.”