41 Quotes by Aimé Césaire

Écoutez le monde blanchorriblement las de son effort immenseses articulations rebelles craquer sous les étoiles duresses raideurs d'acier bleu transperçant la chair mystiqueécoute ses victoires proditoires trompeter ses défaitesécoute aux alibis grandioses son piètre trébuchementPitié pour nos vainquers omniscients et naïfs !

Prospero, you are the master of illusion.Lying is your trademark.And you have lied so much to me(Lied about the world, lied about me)That you have ended by imposing on meAn image of myself.Underdeveloped, you brand me, inferior,That s the way you have forced me to see myselfI detest that image! What’s more, it’s a lie!But now I know you, you old cancer,And I know myself as well.

Alas! There's no one in hell ... all the devils are here!

It is not a dead society that we want to revive.We leave that to those who go in for exoticism. Nor is it the present colonial society that we wish to prolong, the most putrid carrionthat ever rotted under the sun. It is a new society that we must create, with the help of all our brother slaves, a society rich with all theproductive power of modern times, warm with all the fraternity of olden days.

It is not a dead society that we want to revive.We leave that to those who go in for exoticism. Nor is it the present colonial society that we wish to prolong, the most putrid carrionthat ever rotted under the sun. It is a new society that we must create, with the help of all our brother slaves, a society rich with all the productive power of modern times, warm with all the fraternity of olden days.

I t is not a dead society that we want to revive.We leave that to those who go in for exoticism. Nor is it the present colonial society that we wish to prolong, the most putrid carrion that ever rotted under the sun. It is a new society that we must create, with the help of all our brother slaves, a society rich with all the productive power of modern times, warm with all the fraternity of olden days.

Cada dia que passa, cada denegação de justiça, cada repressão policial, cada reivindicação operária afogada em sangue, Cada escândalo sufocado, cada expedição punitiva, cada ônibus da Compañia Republicana de Seguridad, cada policial e cada miliciano, nos fazem sentir o preço de nossas ancestrais sociedades.

I remember very well having said to the Martinican Communists in those days, that black people, as you have pointed out, were doubly proletarianized and alienated: in the first place as workers, but also as blacks, because after all we are dealing with the only race which is denied even the notion of humanity.

At the end of capitalism, which is eager to outlive its day, there is Hitler. At the end of formal humanism and philosophic renunciation, there is Hitler.