Certain Things Need To Be Said If

To Educate The Masses Politically Does Not Mean, Cannot Mean, Making A Political Speech. What It Means Is To Try, Relentlessly And Passionately, To Teach The Masses That Everything Depends On Them; That If We Stagnate It Is Their Responsibility, And That If We Go Forward It Is Due To Them Too, That There Is No Such Thing As A Demiurge, That There Is No Famous Man Who Will Take The Responsibility For Everything, But That The Demiurge Is The People Themselves And The Magic Hands Are Finally Only The Hands Of The People.

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.

It Is The White Man Who Creates The Negro. But It Is The Negro Who Creates Negritude.

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.

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.