The colonialist’s existence is so closely aligned with that of the colonized that he will never be able to overcome the argument which states that misfortune is good for something. With all his power he...

America… goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.

It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as [inherently] exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding...

A local phrase book, entitled Speak in Korean, has the following handy expressions. In the section ‘On the Way to the Hotel’: ‘Let’s Mutilate US Imperialism!’ In the section ‘Word Order’: ‘Yankees are wolves in...

Official Washington cannot tell the American people that the real purpose of its gargantuan military expenditures and belligerent interventions is to make the world safe for General Motors, General Electric, General Dynamics, and all the...

our” culture or country is number one (or not number one, for that matter).

Israel’s demonstration of its military prowess in 1967 confirmed its status as a ‘strategic asset,’ as did its moves to prevent Syrian intervention in Jordan in 1970 in support of the PLO. Under the Nixon...

Take terrorism, one example among the methods used in that struggle. We know that leftist tradition condemns terrorism and political assassination. When the colonized uses them, the leftist colonizer becomes unbearably embarrassed. He makes an...

natives” tend to tourists like indentured servants with plastic, lifeless smiles. It’s not such a charming picture, is it? The truth is ugly, but so is ignorance or denial of such atrocities and pain.

Having confronted the world with little except a battered typewriter and a certain resilience, he can now take posthumous credit for having got the three great questions of the 20th century essentially ‘right.’ Orwell was...

The darkest secret of this country, I am afraid, is that too many of its citizens imagine that they belong to a much higher civilization somewhere else. That higher civilization doesn’t have to be another...

Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and...

The two main criminals are France and the United States. They owe Haiti enormous reparations because of actions going back hundreds of years. If we could ever get to the stage where somebody could say,...

Conquest occurred through violence, and over-expolitation and oppression necessitate continued violence, so the army is present. There would be no contradiction in that, if terror reigned everywhere in the world, but the colonizer enjoys, in...

How often do the poor in the US get to stand in front of their nation’s Marie Antoinette’s and shove the stale, mass-produced cake of lower class reality back into their mouths?

I resolutely refuse to believe that the state of Edward’s health had anything to do with this, and I don’t say this only because I was once later accused of attacking him ‘on his deathbed.’...

Never before in history has such a sweeping fervor for freedom expressed itself in great mass movements which are driving down the bastions of empire. This wind of change blowing through Africa, as I have...

Eurocentrism is quite simply the colonizer’s model of the world.

What do nations care about the cost of war, if by spending a few hundred millions in steel and gunpowder they can gain a thousand millions in diamonds and cocoa?

Emotional neglect lays the groundwork for the emotional numbing that helps boys feel better about being cut off. Eruptions of rage in boys are most often deemed normal, explained by the age-old justification for adolescent...

That’s what imperialism is all about, shoving your language, religion, culture, and race down others’ throats and telling them that they’re beneath you – and it’s not unique to the West either.

Consider the great Samuel Clemens. Huckleberry Finn is one of the few books that all American children are mandated to read: Jonathan Arac, in his brilliant new study of the teaching of Huck, is quite...

different from the traditional education in their various societies, and this by itself was enough to mark them out as a group” (Kwanashie 2002: 50). This new education enabled them to climb the social and...

Judge: But why would that make it possible for you to fool Monsieur Gallimard? Please–get to the point.Song: One, because when he finally met his fantasy woman, he wanted more than anything to believe that...

In most poetic expressions of patriotism, it is impossible to distinguish what is one of the greatest human virtues from the worst human vice, collective egotism.

Veni, vidi, vici. (I came, I saw, I conquered.)

To evoke another great phrase of the American revolutionary heritage — widely though inconclusively attributed to Thomas Jefferson — the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Such a phrase is merely trite, however, unless we...

In his entire output, I can find only one piece of genuine unfairness: a thuggish attack on the poetry of WH Auden, whom he regarded as a dupe of the Communist Party. But even this...

We can be prisoners together. I am en route to a wretched planet called Tarsonis to assume governorship and as you have no other, more pressing engagement, you are coming with me.

A dull, decent people, cherishing and fortifying their dullness behind a quarter of a million bayonets.

The year the Europeans seized Jomo Kenyatta (1952), Chepusepa and I were sharing our homestead with Arimo, a Teso, who was a headman of the local road crew. One day, Arimo’s son found an ostrich’s...

We ought not to speak only about the economics of globalization, but about the psychology of globalization. It’s like the psychology of a battered woman being faced with her husband again and being asked to...

As the seemingly well-intentioned French journalist spoke about Africa’s scarcity and its limited resources, Nine smiled to himself almost condescendingly. He considered such statements an absolute joke. Africa did not, nor did it ever have,...

Our effectiveness depends on our capacity to be audacious and astute, clear and appealing. I would hope that we can create a language more fearless and beautiful than that used by conformist writers to greet...

What is history? Any thoughts, Webster?”History is the lies of the victors,’ I replied, a little too quickly.’Yes, I was rather afraid you’d say that. Well, as long as you remember that it is also...

For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life trying to impress the ‘natives,’ and so in every crisis he has got to do what the ‘natives’ expect of him…...

I hate imperialism. I detest colonialism. And I fear the consequences of their last bitter struggle for life. We are determined, that our nation, and the world as a whole, shall not be the play...

The concept of humanity is an especially useful ideological instrument of imperialist expansion, and in its ethical-humanitarian form it is a specific vehicle of economic imperialism. Here one is reminded of a somewhat modified expression...

The arrogance and brutality of empire are not repealed when they temporarily get deployed in a just cause.

Is everything forbidden us except to fold our arms? Poverty is not written in the stars; under development is not one of God’s mysterious designs.

We first crush people to the earth, and then claim the right of trampling on them forever, because they are prostrate.

When the white man turns tyrant, it is his own freedom that he destroys.

Arabs and other Muslims generally agreed that Saddam Hussein might be a bloody tyrant, but, paralleling FDR’s thinking, “he is our bloody tyrant.” In their view, the invasion was a family affair to be settled...

The long-term integrity of the empire would not be assured by warm words alone. Britain”s own position in the empire had changed. Once, the country been the engine room of empire, the productive heart of...

Power is something that is out of term.

The human murder by poverty in Latin America is secret: every year, without making a sound, three Hiroshima bombs explode over communities that have become accustomed to suffering with clenched teeth.

Islamic killers are over here because we are over there.

As ever, the original inhabitants of Turtle Island are entirely overlooked. Mysteriously, the only time indigenous people are guaranteed a mainstream Amerikkan mention is on Thanksgiving. Again, to contextualize, this would be be kinda like...

My identity as Jewish cannot be reduced to a religious affiliation. Professor Said quoted Gramsci, an author that I’m familiar with, that, and I quote, ‘to know thyself is to understand that we are a...

Robinson Crusoe, the first capitalist hero, is a self-made man who accepts objective reality and then fashions it to his needs through the work ethic, common sense, resilience, technology, and, if need be, racism and...