Aime Cesaire quotes
Aimé Césaire was a French poet, playwright, and politician from Martinique, celebrated as a leading figure of the Négritude movement. His powerful works addressed colonialism, identity, and the struggles of Black people in the Francophone world. He helped redefine modern literature and inspired generations fighting for dignity and equality. Here are 13 of his quotes:
And then one fine day the bourgeoisie is awakened by a terrific reverse shock: the gestapos are busy, the prisons fill up, the torturers around the racks invent, refine, discuss.People are surprised, they become indignant. They say: "How strange! But never mind - it's Nazism, it will pass!” And they wait, and they hope; and they hide the truth from themselves, that it is barbarism, but the supreme barbarism, the crowning barbarism that sums up all the daily barbarisms; that it is Nazism, yes, but that before they were its victims, they were its accomplices; that they tolerated that Nazism before it was inflicted on them, that they absolved it, shut their eyes to it, legitimized it, because, until then, it had been applied only to non-European peoples; that they have cultivated that Nazism, that they are responsible for it.
Aime Cesaire
I believe I have said enough to make it clear that it is neither Marxism nor communism that I am renouncing, and that it is the usage some have made of Marxism and communism that I condemn. That what I want is that Marxism and communism be placed in the service of black peoples, and not black peoples in the service of Marxism and communism.
Aime Cesaire
With the exception of Yugoslavia, in numerous European countries-in the name of socialism-usurping bureaucracies that are cut off from the people (bureaucracies from which it is now proven that nothing can be expected) have achieved the pitiable wonder of transforming into a nightmare what humanity has for so long cherished as a dream: socialism.
Aime Cesaire
Aime Cesaire
Photo:
Jean Baptiste Devaux,
CC BY-SA 4.0
Occupation: French Poet
Born: June 26, 1913
Died: April 17, 2008
Quotes count: 13
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