Quotes from Albert Memmi

I was sort of a half-breed of colonization, understanding everyone because I belonged completely to no one.

It is significant that racism is part of colonialism throughout the world; and it is no coincidence. Racism sums up and symbolizes the fundamental relation which unites colonialist and colonized.

To be sure, the church has greatly assisted the colonialist; backing his ventures, helping his conscience, contributing to the acceptance of colonization even by the colonized.

The most serious blow suffered by the colonized is being removed from history and from the community. Colonization usurps any free role in either war or peace, every decision contributing to his destiny and that of the world, and all cultural and social responsibility.

Racism does not limit itself to biology or economics or psychology or metaphysics; it attacks along many fronts and in many forms, deploying whatever is at hand, and even what is not, inventing when the need arises.

Travel if you wish, taste strange dishes, gather experience in dangerous activities, but see that your soul remains your own. Do not become a stranger to yourself, for you are lost from that day on; you will have no peace if there is not, somewhere within you, a corner of certainty, calm waters where you can take refuge in sleep.

It is not easy to escape mentally from a concrete situation, to refuse its ideology while continuing to live with its actual relationships.

Le racisme est la dévalorisation profitable d'une différence" ou, plus techniquement, "le racisme est la valorisation, généralisée et définitive, de différences réelles ou imaginaires, au profit de l'accusateur et au détriment de sa victime, afin de légitimer une agression".

Every colonial nation carries carries the seeds of a fascist temptation in its bossom. What is fascism if not a regime of oppression for the benefit of a few

For it is not without cause that one needs the police and the army to earn one's living or force and injustice to continue to exist.

Colonial racism is built from three major ideological components: One, the gulf between the culture of the colonialist and the colonized: two, the exploitation of these differences for the benefit of the coloniast; three, the use of these supposed differences as standards of absolute fact.

Nothing could better justify the colonizer's privileged position than industry, and nothing could better justify tge colonised 's destitution than his laziness. The mythical potrait of the colonized therefore includes an unbelievable laziness, and that of the colonizer suggests that employing the colonized is not very profitable, thereby authorizing his reasonable wages.

Now, I want to remember all this. My life has known days of innocence when I had only to close my eyes in order not to see.

The ' colonized do not know how to breath', the 'people here do not know how walk; they make little steps which do not get them ahead.

Just as I sat on the fence between two civilizations, so would I now find myself between two classes; and I realized that, in trying to sit on several chairs, one generally lands on the floor.

All efforts of the colonialist are directed toward maintaining thsi social immobility, and racism is the surest weapon this aim. Racism appears then, not as an accidental detail but a subconsubstantial part of colonialism.

The colonialst as the custodian of the values of civilization and history, he accomplishes a mission; he has the immense merit of bringing light to the colonized's ignominious darkness.

One must live, act and think now, in this life, as if one were worthy of a hoped immortality. To be brief, find and communicate the truth, if possible. Beware of prejudice and utopias, of all dogmas, including those that are one's own. Live without submission and without compromise. For me, this is the ethics of the thinker and the foundation of what I mean by philosophy.

A blonde woman, be she dull or anything else, appears superior to any brunette.

Racism... is the highest expression of the colonial system and one of the most significant features of the colonialist.

But I have no sense of humor and not enough courage to be cynical.