“What then did you expect when you unbound the gag that muted those black mouths? That they would chant your praises?”

— Jean Paul Sartre

"Orphée Noir (Black Orpheus)" preface, Anthologie de la Nouvelle Poésie Nègre et Malgache (1948)
Context: What then did you expect when you unbound the gag that muted those black mouths? That they would chant your praises? Did you think that when those heads that our fathers had forcibly bowed down to the ground were raised again, you would find adoration in their eyes?

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "What then did you expect when you unbound the gag that muted those black mouths? That they would chant your praises?" by Jean Paul Sartre?

Jean Paul Sartre 321

French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, sc… 1905–1980

Related quotes

“Queen Victoria - I thought gags were things that were put by authority into people's mouths.
D'Oyly Carte - These gags, your Majesty, are things that people put into their own mouths without authority”

Richard D'Oyly Carte (1844–1901) English theatre manager and producer

Conversation with Queen Victoria after a Royal Command performance of The Gondoliers in March 1891, the 'gags' in question are ad libs added by the actors during the performance
Quoted in The Complete Annotated Gilbert and Sullivan, Ian Bradley, OUP, 1996. Originally found in the magazine The Era

“How would your life change if your actions did all the talking and all you used your mouth for was to say please and thank you?”

Steve Maraboli (1975)

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 74

“Now you've opened your mouth, do you expect me to lose interest?”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover

“Praise and bless everything in your life! When you are praising and blessing you are on the highest frequency of love. – The Secret”

Ralph Smart

“You don't always talk with your mouth. Sometimes what you say with your mouth hardly matters at all. You have to signify”

Stephen King book From a Buick 8

Source: From a Buick 8

“What occasion had you to praise me? praise is often hurtful to those on whom it is bestowed.”

Heloise (1101–1164) French nun, writer, scholar, and abbess

Letter IV : Heloise to Abelard
Letters of Abelard and Heloise
Context: What occasion had you to praise me? praise is often hurtful to those on whom it is bestowed. A secret vanity springs up in the heart, blinds us, and conceals from us wounds that are ill cured. A seducer flatters us, and at the same time, aims at our destruction. A sincere friend disguises nothing from us, and from passing a light hand over the wound, makes us feel it the more intensely, by applying remedies. Why do you not deal after this manner with me? Will you be esteemed a base dangerous flatterer; or, if you chance to see any thing commendable in me, have you no fear that vanity, which is so natural to all women, should quite efface it? but let us not judge of virtue by outward appearances, for then the reprobates as well as the elect may lay claim to it. An artful impostor may, by his address gain more admiration than the true zeal of a saint.