The Wretched of the Earth

by Frantz Fanon

In actual fact, proof of success lies in a social fabric that has been changed inside out.

Decolonization is truly the creation of new men.

The "thing" colonized becomes a man through the very process of liberation.

This determination to have the last move up to the front, to have them clamber up (too quickly, say some) the famous echelons of an organized society, can only succeed by resorting to every means, including, of course, violence.

The colonial world is a compartmentalized world.

The colonized world is a world divided in two. The dividing line, the border, is represented by the barracks and the police stations.

In capitalist societies, education, whether secular or religious, the teaching of moral reflexes handed down from father to son, the exemplary integrity of workers decorated after fifty years of loyal and faithful service, the fostering of love for harmony and wisdom, those aesthetic forms of respect for the status quo, instill in the exploited a mood of submission and inhibition which considerably eases the task of the agents of law and order.

The ruling species is first and foremost the outsider from elsewhere, different from the indigenous population, "the others."

Truth is what hastens the dislocation of the colonial regime, what fosters the emergence of the nation.

colonialism only loosens its hold when the knife is at its throat.

colonialism is not a machine capable of thinking, a body endowed with reason. It is naked violence and

only gives in when confronted with greater violence.

they are convinced violent methods are ineffective.

For them, there can be no doubt, any attempt to smash colonial oppression by

force is an act of despair, a s...

When they are told we must act, they imagine bombs being dropped, armored cars rumbling through the streets, a hail of bulle...

Their incapacity to triumph by violence needs no demonstration; they prove it in their daily life...

The colonialist bourgeoisie is aided and abetted in the pacification of the colonized by the inescapable powers of religion.

The emergence of the new nation and the demolition of the colonial system are the result of either a violent struggle by the newly independent people or outside violence by other colonized peoples, which has an inhibiting effect on the colonial regime.

A dramatic atmosphere sets in where everyone wants to prove he is ready for anything. It is under these circumstances that the gun goes off on its own for nerves are on edge, fear has set in, and everyone is trigger-happy.

For the colonized subject, objectivity is always directed against him.

The violence of the colonial regime and the counterviolence of the colonized balance each other and respond to each other in an extraordinary reciprocal homogeneity.

Violence among the colonized will spread in proportion to the violence exerted

by the colonial...