Best Quotes by Frantz Fanon (Top 10)

  1. 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.
  2. Each generation must discover its mission, fulfill it or betray it, in relative opacity.
  3. 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. 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.
  4. When we revolt it's not for a particular culture. We revolt simply because, for many reasons, we can no longer breathe
  5. Imperialism leaves behind germs of rot which we must clinically detect and remove from our land but from our minds as well.
  6. 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; that if we stagnate it is their responsibility, and that if we go forward it is due to them too, that there is no such thing as a demiurge, that there is no famous man who will take the responsibility for everything, but that the demiurge is the people themselves and the magic hands are finally only the hands of the people.
  7. The oppressed will always believe the worst about themselves.
  8. The basic confrontation which seemed to be colonialism versus anti-colonialism, indeed capitalism versus socialism, is already losing its importance. 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.
  9. ...There are too many idiots in this world. And having said it, I have the burden of proving it.
  10. What matters is not to know the world but to change it.

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