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Beware of assuming the sterile attitude of a spectator, for life is not a spectacle, a sea of miseries is not a proscenium, a man screaming is not a dancing bear.

— Aimé Césaire Notebook of a Return to the Native Land (1939)

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More quotes by Aimé Césaire

My mouth shall be the mouth of those calamities that have no mouth, my voice the freedom of those who break down in the prison holes of despair.

Notebook of a Return to the Native Land (1939)

Weakness always has a thousand means and cowardice is all that keeps us from listing them.

Une Tempête (1969)

Every time you summon me it reminds me of a basic fact, the fact that you've stolen everything from me, even my identity!

Une Tempête (1969)

They tolerated that Nazism before it was inflicted on them, ... they absolved it, shut their eyes to it, legitimized it, because, until then, it had been applied only to non-European peoples.

It is not the head of a civilization that begins to rot first. It is the heart.

Discourse on Colonialism (1955)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Aimé Césaire (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.