Certain things need to be said if one is to avoid falsifying the problem.

The native must realize that colonialism never gives anything away for nothing.

When a bachelor of philosophy from the Antilles refuses to apply for certification as a teacher on the grounds of his color I say that philosophy has never saved anyone. When someone else strives and 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.

There is a point at which methods devour themselves.

I am black: I am the incarnation of a complete fusion with the world, an intuitive understanding of the earth, an abandonment of my ego in the heart of the cosmos, and no white man, no matter how intelligent he may be, can ever understand Louis Armstrong and the music of the Congo.

Everything can be explained to the people, on the single condition that you want them to understand.

Imperialism leaves behind germs of rot which we must clinically detect and remove from our land but from our minds as well.