Quote by Aimé Césaire: “No one colonizes innocently, no one colonizes with impunity either.”

Colonization always causes damage — to the people being colonized, but also to the colonizers themselves. No nation can dominate and dehumanize others without something in its own moral character being corrupted in the process.

Césaire published Discourse on Colonialism in 1950, five years after World War II exposed the brutality of European fascism — a system he argued was simply colonialism turned inward. European empires were under pressure from independence movements across Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean.

Martinican poet, playwright, and politician who co-founded the Négritude movement, which reclaimed African cultural identity against colonial erasure. His 1950 work Discourse on Colonialism is a foundational text of postcolonial thought and anticolonial political theory.