...There are too many idiots in this world. And having said it, I have the burden of proving it.

Today I believe in the possibility of love; that is why I endeavor to trace its imperfections, its perversions.

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.

Taking the continent as a whole, this religious tension may be responsible for the revival of the commonest racial feeling. Africa is divided into Black and White, and the names that are substituted- Africa south of the Sahara, Africa north of the Sahara- do not manage to hide this latent racism. Here, it is affirmed that White Africa has a thousand-year-old tradition of culture; that she is Mediterranean, that she is a continuation of Europe and that she shares in Graeco-Latin civilization. Black Africa is looked on as a region that is inert, brutal, uncivilized - in a word, savage.

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

If the building of a bridge does not enrich the awareness of those who work on it, then the bridge ought not to be built.

To speak a language is to take on a world, a culture.