Frantz Fanon Quotes
Frantz Fanon was a Martinican-born psychiatrist, philosopher, and revolutionary whose work has been foundational for postcolonial theory. Trained in France and posted as a psychiatrist in colonial Algeria, he came to support the Algerian struggle for independence and resigned to write openly against the colonial order. The quotes below are attributed to Frantz Fanon, organized by topic.
Browse Frantz Fanon by topic
Frantz Fanon on Freedom
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Attributed to Frantz Fanon:
“I am not a prisoner of history. I should not seek there for the meaning of my destiny.”
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Attributed to Frantz Fanon:
“The colonized man finds his freedom in and through violence.”
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“We are nothing on earth if we are not in the first place the slaves of a cause, the cause of the peoples, the cause of justice and liberty .”
Letter to Roger Tayeb, December 1961, as cited in Peter Geismar, Fanon (1971), p. 185. -
“The black man wants to be white . The white man slaves to reach a human level.”
Black Skin, White Masks(1952) | Introduction, page 9
Frantz Fanon on God
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“The Church in the colonies is a white man's Church, a foreigners' Church. It does not call the colonized to the ways of God, but to the ways of the white man, to the ways of the master, the ways of the oppressor.”
The Wretched of the Earth(1961) | p. 7
Frantz Fanon on Justice
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“The serf is essentially different from the knight , but a reference to divine right is needed to justify this difference in status.”
The Wretched of the Earth(1961) | p. 5 -
“I said just above that South Africa has a racist structure. Now I shall go farther and say that Europe has a racist structure.”
Black Skin, White Masks(1952) | p. 92
Frantz Fanon on Knowledge
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“To speak a language is to take on a world, a culture.”
pp. 38 -
Attributed to Frantz Fanon:
“What matters now is not to know the world but to change it.”
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“Every veil that fell, every body that became liberated from traditional embrace of the haik , every face that offered itself to the bold and impatient glance of the occupier, was a negative expression of the fact that Algeria was beginning to deny herself and was accepting the rape of the colonizer.”
A Dying Colonialism -
“Introduction, page 7”
Why write this book? No one has asked me for it. Especially those to whom it is directed. Well? Well, I reply quite calmly that there are too many idiots in this world. And having said it, I have the burden of proving it. -
“At risk of arousing the resentment of my colored brothers, I will say that the black is not a man. There is a zone of nonbeing, an extraordinary sterile and arid region, an utterly naked declivity where an authentic upheaval can be born. In most cases, the black man lacks the advantage of being able to accomplish this descent into real hell.”
Introduction, page 8 -
“Introduction, page 8”
At risk of arousing the resentment of my colored brothers, I will say that the black is not a man. There is a zone of nonbeing, an extraordinary sterile and arid region, an utterly naked declivity where an authentic upheaval can be born. In most cases, the black man lacks the advantage of being able to accomplish this descent into real hell. -
“Introduction, page 8”
The black is a black man;that is, as the result of a series of aberrations of affect, he is rooted at the core of a universe from which he must be extricated. -
“Fervor is the weapon of choice of the impotent.”
Introduction, page 9
Frantz Fanon on Life
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“The living expression of the nation is the collective consciousness in motion of the entire people.”
The Wretched of the Earth(1961) | p. 144
Frantz Fanon on Mind
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Attributed to Frantz Fanon:
“Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted.”
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“"Dirty nigger!" Or simply, "Look! A Negro!" I came into the world imbued with the will to find a meaning in things, my spirit filled with the desire to attain to the source of the world, and then I found that I was an object in the midst of other objects.”
Black Skin, White Masks(1952) | opening lines of chapter 5: "The Lived Experience of the Black Man" (also translated as "The Fact of Blackness" in some editions of the book), p. 109
Frantz Fanon on Nature
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“Why write this book? No one has asked me for it. Especially those to whom it is directed. Well? Well, I reply quite calmly that there are too many idiots in this world. And having said it, I have the burden of proving it.”
Introduction, page 7 -
“The black is a black man;that is, as the result of a series of aberrations of affect, he is rooted at the core of a universe from which he must be extricated.”
Introduction, page 8 -
“To destroy the colonial world means nothing less than demolishing the colonist's sector, burying it deep within the earth or banishing it from the territory.”
The Wretched of the Earth(1961) | p. 6 Alternate translation: The destruction of the colonial world is no more and no less that the abolition of one zone, its burial in the depths of the earth or its expulsion from the country. -
“All forms of exploitation resemble one another. They all seek the source of their necessity in some edict of a Biblical nature. All forms of exploitation are identical because all of them are applied against the same "object": man.”
Black Skin, White Masks(1952) | p. 88 -
“Alternate translation: The destruction of the colonial world is no more and no less that the abolition of one zone, its burial in the depths of the earth or its expulsion from the country.”
The Wretched of the Earth(1961)
Frantz Fanon on Politics
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Attributed to Frantz Fanon:
“Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it.”
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Attributed to Frantz Fanon:
“Imperialism leaves behind germs of rot which we must clinically detect and remove from our land but from our minds as well.”