Frantz Fanon

Quotes

1. I said just above that South Africa has a racist structure. Now I shall go farther and say that Europe has a racist structure.

   p. 92

2. 

   The childhood of Mayotte Capécia shows us a certain number of characteristics that illustrate the line of orientation she followed as an adult. And each time there is a movement or a contact, it will have a direct relation to her goal. It would seem indeed that for her white and black represent the two poles of a world, two poles in perpetual conflict: a genuinely Manichean concept of the world; the word has been spoken, it must be remembered—white or black, that is the question.

   I am white: that is to say I possess beauty and virtue, which have never been black. I am the color of daylight....

   I am black: I am the incarnation of a complete fusion with the world, an intuitive understanding of the earth, an abandonment of my ego in the heart of the cosmos, and no white man, no matter how intelligent he may be , can ever understand Louis Armstrong and the music of the Congo. If I am black, it is not the result of a curse, but it is because, having offered my skin, I have been able to absorb all the cosmic effluvia. I am truly a ray of sunlight under the earth...

   p. 44

3. 

   "Dirty nigger!" Or simply, "Look! A Negro!"

   I came into the world imbued with the will to find a meaning in things, my spirit filled with the desire to attain to the source of the world, and then I found that I was an object in the midst of other objects.

   p. 109

4. 

   In the magazines the Wolf, the Devil, the Evil Spirit, the Bad Man, the Savage are always symbolized by Negroes or Indians; sinc there is always identification with the citor, the little negro, quite as easily as the little white boy, becomes an explorer, an adventurer, a missionary " who faces the danger of being eaten by the wicked Negroes."

   p. 146

5. 

   The Negro enslaved by his inferiority, the white man enslaved by his superiority alike behave in accordance with a neurotic orientation.

   p. 60

6. 

   In no way should my color be regarded as a flaw. From the comment the Negro accepts the separation imposed by the European he has no further respite, and "is it not understandable that thenceforward he will try to elevate himself to the white man's level? to elevate himself in the range of colors to which he attributes a kid of hierarchy.

   We shall see that another solution is possible. It implies a restructuring of the world.

   p. 81

7. 

   The black is a black man;that is, as the result of a series of aberrations of affect, he is rooted at the core of a universe from which he must be extricated.

   p. 8

8. 

   The landing of the white man on Madagascar inflicted injury without measure. The consequences of that irruption of Europeans onto Madagascar were not psychological alone, since, as every authority has observed, there are inner relationships between consciousness and the social context.

   p. 97

9. 

   As soon as they are born it is obvious to them that their cramped world, riddled with taboos, can only be challenged by out and out violence.

   p. 3

10. 

    Why write this book? No one has asked me for it.

    Especially those to whom it is directed.

    Well? Well, I reply quite calmly that there are too many idiots in this world. And having said it, I have the burden of proving it.

    p. 7

11. 

    In every society, in every collectivity, exists - a channel, an outlet through which the forces accumulated in the form of aggression.

    p. 144

12. 

    The serf is essentially different from the knight, but a reference to divine right is needed to justify this difference in status.

    p. 5