Frantz Fanon Quotes

“O my body, make of me always a man who questions!”

“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.”

“To speak a language is to take on a world, a culture.”

“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.”

“They realize at last that change does not mean reform, that change does not mean improvement.”

“I remember awakening one morning and finding everything smeared with the color of forgotten love.

“In the World through which I travel, I am endlessly creating myself.”

″ 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.”

“Negrophobes exist. It is not hatred of the Negro, however, that motivates them; they lack the courage for that, or they have lost it. Hate is not inborn; it has to be constantly cultivated, to be brought into being, in conflict with more or less recognized guilt complexes. ”

“A man who has a language consequently possesses the world expressed and implied by that language.”

“I have been treated better than I should have been---not by life in general nor by the machinery of things but by women.”

“The basic confrontation which seemed to be colonialism versus anti-colonialism, indeed capitalism versus socialism, is already losing its importance.”

“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. ”

“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.”

“...There are too many idiots in this world. And having said it, I have the burden of proving it.”

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

“Mastery of language affords remarkable power.”

“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.”

“Each generation must discover its mission, fulfill it or betray it, in relative opacity.”

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

“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 dimensions”

“Things get bad for all of us, almost continually, and what we do under the constant stress reveals who/what we are.”

“and the color in my eyes has gone back into the sea.”

“When a hot woman meets a hermit one of them is going to change.”

“There are times when those eyes inside your brain stare back at you.”

“Too often the people complain that they have done nothing with their lives and then they wait for somebody to tell them that this isn’t so.”

“I wish to weep but sorrow is stupid. I wish to believe but belief is a graveyard.”

“and when love came to us twice and lied to us twice we decided to never love again that was fair fair to us and fair to love itself.”

″..we ask for no mercy or no miracles; we are strong enough to live and to die and to kill flies..”

“attend the boxing matches, go to the racetrack, live on luck and skill, get alone, get alone often, and if you can’t sleep alone be careful of the words you speak in your sleep; and ask for no mercy no miracles;..”

“but when I see those lovely old boxcars with their faded painted lettering and those flat cars and those fat round tankers all lined up and waiting I get quiet inside I get what other men get from other things I just feel better and it’s good to feel better whenever you can not needing a reason.”

“What’s genius? I don’t know but I do know that the difference between a madman and a professional is that a pro does as well as he can within what he has set out to do and a madman does exceptionally well at what he can’t help doing.”

“you fall into the mirror, come through the other side staring at a lightbulb.”

“morning, it touches the nerves quickly as if we were already in the hunter’s sights. the body yawns and stretches in the light. the pilgrimage is about to begin.”

“I’ve memorized all the fish in the sea I’ve memorized each opportunity strangled and I remember awakening one morning and finding everything smeared with the color of forgotten love and I’ve memorized that too.”

“Finally there is nothing here for death to take away.”

“all the poets wanted to get disability insurance it was better than immortality.”

“yes, the real miracles are the thousands of tiny people who know exactly what they are doing. I used to look for inspiration in higher places but the higher you go like to Plato or God the less space there is in which to stand.”

“if only we were crazy enough to be willing to ignore our mechanical and static perceptions we’d know that a half-filled coffee cup holds more secrets than, say, the Grand Canyon.”