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“A civilization that proves incapable of solving the problems it creates is a decadent civilization.”

Source: Discours sur le colonialisme (Paris: Réclame, 1950), opening sentence; English trans. Joan Pinkham (Monthly Review Press, 1972)

Context Opening a pamphlet written five years after the Second World War, he charged that Europe could answer neither the colonial question nor the problem of the working class it had created.

Portrait of Aimé Césaire
Aimé CésaireMartinique · 1913–2008
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