the thick stream of air hauled toward the summits first…

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

— Aime Cesaire

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

— Aime Cesaire

Africa, help me to go home, carry me like an aged child in your arms. Undress me and wash me. Strip me of all…

— Aime Cesaire

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

— Aime Cesaire

I would rediscover the secret of great communications and great combustions. I would say storm. I would say river. I would say tornado. I…

— Aime Cesaire

“like the scorpion's question mark drawn in the pollen on the canvas of the sky and of our brains at midnight”

— Aimé Césaire

“the forest remembers that the last word can only be the flaming cry of the bird of ruins in the bowl of the storm”

— Aimé Césaire

“and no race has a monopoly on beauty, on intelligence, on strength”

— Aimé Césaire

When I turn on my radio, when I hear that Negroes have been lynched in America, I say that we have been lied to:…

— Aime Cesaire

Beware, my body and my soul, beware above all of crossing your arms and assuming the sterile attitude of the spectator, for life is…

— Aime Cesaire

“In light of recent events—genocide in East Africa, the collapse of democracy throughout the continent, the isolation of Cuba, the overthrow of progressive movements…

— Aimé Césaire

“What am I driving at? At this idea: that no one colonizes innocently, that no one colonizes with impunity either; that a nation which…

— Aimé Césaire

“your face like a village asleep at the bottom of a lake which is reborn to daylight from the grass and from the year…

— Aimé Césaire

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

— Aime Cesaire

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…

— Aime Cesaire