The Wretched of the Earth

by Frantz Fanon

"Think before speaking to the masses, they are easily excitable."

This European opulence is literally a scandal for it was built on the backs of slaves, it fed on the blood of slaves, and owes its very existence to the soil and subsoil of the underdeveloped world.

The almighty power of the dollar, whose security after all is only guaranteed by the slaves of this world,

The colonized subject is upgraded, and attempts are made to disarm him psychologically and, naturally, with a few coins.

The colonized subject is so starved of anything that humanizes him, even if it is third rate, that these trivial handouts in some cases manage to impress him. His consciousness is so vulnerable and so inscrutable that it is ignited by the slightest spark.

We have become so used to the occupier's contempt and his determination to maintain his stranglehold, whatever the cost, that any semblance of generosity or any sign of goodwill is greeted with surprise and jubilation.

The colonized must be made to see that colonialism never gives away anything for nothing.

Colonialism almost never exploits the entire country. It is content with extracting natural resources and exporting them to the metropolitan industries thereby enabling a specific sector to grow relatively wealthy, while the rest of the colony continues, or rather sinks, into underdevelopment and poverty.

Resorting to technical language means you are determined to treat the masses as uninitiated.

People must know where they are going and why.

The power structure draws its validity and strength solely from the existence of the people's struggle.

for the successful outcome of any decision depends on the conscious, coordinated commitment of the people as a whole. We are all in the same boat.

When the black man, who has never felt as much a "Negro" as he has under white domination, decides to prove his culture and act as a cultivated person, he realizes that history imposes on him a terrain already

for the colonized, living does not mean embodying a set of values, does not mean integrating oneself into the coherent, constructive development of a world. To live simply means not to die. To exist means staying alive.

For centuries Europe has brought the progress of other men to a halt and enslaved them for its own purposes and glory;