Aime Cesaire

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

— Aime Cesaire

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.

— Aime Cesaire

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.

— Aime Cesaire

The details supplied by Khrushchev on Stalin’s methods ... lead us to believe in the existence in these countries of a veritable state capitalism, exploiting the working class in a manner not very different from the way the working class is used in capitalist countries.

— Aime Cesaire

With the exception of Yugoslavia, in numerous European countries—in the name of socialism—usurping bureaucracies that are cut off from the people (bureaucracies from which it is now proven that nothing can be expected) have achieved the pitiable wonder of transforming into a nightmare what humanity has for so long cherished as a dream: socialism.

— Aime Cesaire

I believe I have said enough to make it clear that it is neither Marxism nor communism that I am renouncing, and that it is the usage some have made of Marxism and communism that I condemn. That what I want is that Marxism and communism be placed in the service of black peoples, and not black peoples in the service of Marxism and communism.

— Aime Cesaire

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

— Aime Cesaire

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

— Aime Cesaire