Black Skin, White Masks Quotes

“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.”
― Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

“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.”
― Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

“...There are too many idiots in this world. And having said it, I have the burden of proving it.”
― Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

“O my body, make of me always a man who questions!”
― Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

“What matters is not to know the world but to change it.”
― Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

“The Negro enslaved by his inferiority, the white man enslaved by his superiority alike behave in accordance with a neurotic orientation.”
― Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

“Today I believe in the possibility of love; that is why I endeavor to trace its imperfections, its perversions.”
― Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

“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.”
― Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

“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. Hate demands existence and he who hates has to show his hate in appropriate actions and behavior; in a sense, he has to become hate. That is why Americans have substituted discrimination for lynching. Each to his own side of the street.”
― Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

“A man who has a language consequently possesses the world expressed and implied by that language.”
― Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

“I, the man of color, want only this: That the tool never possess the man. That the enslavement of man by man cease forever. That is, of one by another. That it be possible for me to discover and to love man, wherever he may be.”
― Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

“At first glance it seems strange that the attitude of the anti-Semite can be equated with that of the negrophobe. It was my philosophy teacher from the Antilles who reminded me one day: “When you hear someone insulting the Jews pay attention; he is talking about you.” And I believed at the time he was universally right, meaning that I was responsible in my body and my soul for the fate reserved for my brother. Since then, I have understood that what he meant quite simply was the anti-Semite is inevitably a negrophobe.”
― Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

“When someone strives & strains to prove to me that black men are as intelligent as white men, I say that intelligence has never saved anyone; and that is true, for, if philosophy and intelligence are invoked to proclaim the equality of men, they have also been employed to justify the extermination of men.”
― Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

“The colonized is elevated above his jungle status in proportion to his adoption of the mother country's cultural standards.”
― Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

“Superiority? Inferiority?
Why not simply try to touch the other, feel the other, discover each other?”
― Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

“Oh my body, make of me a man who always questions!”
― Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

“To speak pidgin to a Negro makes him angry, because he himself is a pidgin-nigger-talker. But, I will be told, there is no wish, no intention to anger him. I grant this; but it is just this absence of wish, this lack of interest, this indifference, this automatic manner of classifying him, imprisoning him, primitivizing him, decivilizing him, that makes him angry.

If a man who speaks pidgin to a man of color or an Arab does not see anything wrong or evil in such behavior, it is because he has never stopped to think.”
― Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

“Get used to me, I am not getting used to anyone.” I shouted my laughter to the
stars.”
― Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

“[Educated blacks] Society refuses to consider them genuine Negroes. The Negro is a savage, whereas the student is civilized. "You're us," and if anyone thinks you are a Negro he is mistaken, because you merely look like one.”
― Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

“Introducing someone as a "Negro poet with a University degree" or again, quite simply, the expression, "a great black poet." These ready-made phrases, which seem in a common-sense way to fill a need-or have a hidden subtlety, a permanent rub.”
― Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

“I feel my soul as vast as the world, truly a soul as deep as the deepest of rivers; my chest has the power to expand to infinity. I was made to give and they prescribe for me the humility of the cripple.”
― Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

“Man is human only to the extent to which he tries to impose himself on another man in order to be recognized by him. As long as he has not been effectively recognized by the other, it is this other who remains the focus of his actions. His human worth and reality depend on this other and on his recognition by the other. It is in this other that the meaning of his life is condensed.”
― Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

“We believe that an individual must endeavor to assume the universalism inherent in the human condition.”
― Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

“I want the world to recognize with me the open door of every consciousness”
― Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

“One avoids Creolisms. Some families completely forbid Creole and mothers ridicule their children for speaking it.”
― Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

“As I begin to recognise that the Negro is the symbol of sin, I catch myself hating the Negro. But then I recognise that I am a Negro. There are two ways out of this conflict. Either I ask others to pay no attention to my skin, or else I want them to be aware of it. I try then to find value for what is bad--since I have unthinkingly conceded that the black man is the colour of evil. In order to terminate this neurotic situation, in which I am compelled to choose an unhealthy, conflictual solution, fed on fantasies, hostile, inhuman in short, I have only one solution: to rise above this absurd drama that others have staged around me, to reject the two terms that are equally unacceptable, and through one human being, to reach out for the universal.
When the Negro dives--in other words, goes under--something remarkable occurs.”
― Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

“ô mon corps, fait toujours de moi un homme qui s'interroge.”
― Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

“There is no forgiveness when one who claims a superiority falls below the standard.”
― Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

“For the beloved should not allow me to turn my infantile fantasies into reality: On the contrary, he should help me to go beyond them.”
― Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

“there is an extraordinary power in the possession of a language.”
― Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks