297 Quotes About Colonialism

Will: 'Singing the praises of our fair city? We treat you well here, don't we, James? I doubt I'd have that kind of luck in Shanghai. What do you call us there again?'Jem: 'Yang guizi ... foreign devils.

[T]he phrase 'first world problems.' The first problematic issue with this phrase is the assumption that we live in three (or more) worlds rather than one planet.

Listen:my father speaks Urdulanguage of dancing peacocksrosewater fountainseven its curses are beautiful.He speaks Hindisuave and melodicearthy Punjabisalty rich as saag paneercoastal Kiswahililaced with Arabic,he speaks Gujaratisolid ancestral pride.Five languagesfive different worldsyet Englishshrinkshimdownbefore white menwho think their flat cold spiky wordsmake the only reality.

A colonial economy by definition is a dependent economy; a centralized, lopsided, and distorted economy. And as we have seen, an intensely vulnerable economy.

En el Caribe cuando alguien habla bien tiene el respeto de la gente y de pequeño yo veía eso y me encantaba. Supongo que como a nosotros nos impusieron ese idioma colonial [el español] la resistencia consistió en eso: “Ok, tengo que aprenderlo, pero lo voy a convertir en oportunidad”.

Our effectiveness depends on our capacity to be audacious and astute, clear and appealing. I would hope that we can create a language more fearless and beautiful than that used by conformist writers to greet the twilight.

The epistemological separation of colony from metropolis, the systemic occultation of the colonial labour on which imperial prosperity is based, results in a situation in which... the truth of metropolitan existence is not visible in the metropolis itself

Clearly, the humanitarian relation is not a relation between equals. We are not our "brother's keepers" then, but rather we are more like animal keepers. Bombing for us is really just an animal management technology, and our relationship to the world remains a zoological one.

Madame, he said, when Aunt Theodosia finished her story and flashed her famous medal around the room, do you realize King Leopold cut the hands off workers who, in the opinion of his plantation overseers did not fulfill their rubber quota? Rather than cherish that medal, Madame, you should regard it as a symbol of your unwitting complicity with this despot who worked to death and brutalized and eventually exterminated thousands and thousands of African peoples.