A man who has a language consequently possesses the world expressed and implied by that language.

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.

Culture has never the translucidity of custom; it abhors all simplification. In its essence it is opposed to custom, for custom is always the deterioration of culture.

We believe that an individual must endeavor to assume the universalism inherent in the human condition.

In the colonial context the settler only ends his work of breaking in the native when the latter admits loudly and intelligibly the supremacy of the white man's values.

However painful it may be for me to accept this conclusion, I am obliged to state it: for the black man there is only one destiny. And it is white.

To speak...means above all to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization.