Best 23 quotes of Aime Cesaire on MyQuotes

Africa, help me to go home, carry me like an aged child in your arms. Undress me and wash me. Strip me of all of these garments, strip me as a man strips off dreams when the dawn comes. . . .

And let me die suddenly, to be born again in the revelation of beauty....And the revelation of beauty is the wisdom of the ancestors.

Beware, my body and my soul, beware above all of crossing your arms and assuming the sterile attitude of the spectator, for life is not a spectacle, a sea of griefs is not a proscenium, and a man who wails is not a dancing bear.

Communism has served us ill in having us swap a living brotherhood for what looks to have the features of the coldest of all chill abstractions.

Culture is everything. Culture is the way we dress, the way we carry our heads, the way we walk, the way we tie our ties - it is not only the fact of writing books or building houses.

I am talking about societies drained of their essence, cultures trampled underfoot, institutions undermined, lands confiscated, religions smashed, magnificent artistic creations destroyed, extraordinary possibilities wiped out.

I have a different idea of a universal. It is of a universal rich with all that is particular, rich with all the particulars there are, the deepening of each particular, the coexistence of them all.

In the whole world no poor devil is lynched, no wretch is tortured, in whom I too am not degraded and murdered.

It is no use painting the foot of the tree white, the strength of the bark cries out from beneath the paint.

I would rediscover the secret of great communications and great combustions. I would say storm. I would say river. I would say tornado. I would say leaf. I would say tree. I would be drenched by all rains, moistened by all dews. I would roll like frenetic blood on the slow current of the eye of words turned into mad horses into fresh children into clots into curfew into vestiges of temples into precious stones remote enough to discourage miners. Whoever would not understand me would not understand any better the roaring of a tiger.

Out of the sky, the birds, the parrots, the bells, silk, cloth, and drums, out of Sundays dancing, children's words and love words, out of love for the little fists of children, I will build a world, my world with round shoulders.

Poetic knowledge is born in the great silence of scientific knowledge.

Reason, I sacrifice you to the evening breeze.

There's room for everyone at the rendezvous of victory.

The weakness of most men they do not know how to become a stone or tree.

When I turn on my radio, when I hear that Negroes have been lynched in America, I say that we have been lied to: Hitler is not dead; when I turn on my radio, when I hear that Jews have been insulted, mistreated, persecuted, I say that we have been lied to: Hitler is not dead; when, finally, I turn on my radio and hear that in Africa forced labor has been inaugurated and legalized, I say that we have certainly been lied to: Hitler is not dead.

Alas! There's no one in hell ... all the devils are here!

Beware of crossing your arms in the sterile attitude of the spectator, because life is not a spectacle, because a a sea of sorrows is not a proscenium, because a man who screams is not a dancing bear.

. . . car il n'est point vrai que l'oeuvre de l'homme est finie que nous n'avons rien à faire au monde que nous parasitons le monde qu'il suffit que nous nous mettions au pas du monde mais l'oeuvre de l'homme vient seulement de commencer et il reste à l'homme à conquérir toute interdiction immobilisée aux coins de sa ferveur et aucune race ne possède le monopole de la beauté, de l'intelligence, de la force . . .

Écoutez le monde blanc horriblement las de son effort immense ses articulations rebelles craquer sous les étoiles dures ses raideurs d'acier bleu transperçant la chair mystique écoute ses victoires proditoires trompeter ses défaites écoute aux alibis grandioses son piètre trébuchement Pitié pour nos vainquers omniscients et naïfs !

Haiti où la négritude se mit debout pour la première fois et dit qu'elle croyait à son humanité.

I have made a pact with the night, I have felt it softly healing me.

Prospero, you are the master of illusion. Lying is your trademark. And you have lied so much to me (Lied about the world, lied about me) That you have ended by imposing on me An image of myself. Underdeveloped, you brand me, inferior, That s the way you have forced me to see myself I detest that image! What’s more, it’s a lie! But now I know you, you old cancer, And I know myself as well.