Leopold Sedar Senghor Quotes & Sayings

The [priest] was really my teacher, because I reacted against the things he told me. — Leopold Sedar Senghor

Art is animated by invisible forces that rule the universe. — Leopold Sedar Senghor

Let us listen to the voices of our Forebears ... In the smoky cabin, souls that wish us well are murmuring. — Leopold Sedar Senghor

I have always taken care to put an idea or emotion behind my words. I have made it a habit to be suspicious of the mere music of words. — Leopold Sedar Senghor

New York! I say New York, let black blood flow into your blood.
Let it wash the rust from your steel joints, like an oil of life
Let it give your bridges the curve of hips and supple vines.
Now the ancient age returns, unity is restored,
The recociliation of the Lion and Bull and Tree
Idea links to action, the ear to the heart, sign to meaning.
See your rivers stirring with musk alligators
And sea cows with mirage eyes. No need to invent the Sirens.
Just open your eyes to the April rainbow
And your eyes, especially your ears, to God
Who in one burst of saxophone laughter
Created heaven and earth in six days,
And on the seventh slept a deep Negro sleep. — Leopold Sedar Senghor

The equilibrium you admire in me is an unstable one, difficult to maintain. My inner life was split early between the call of the Ancestors and the call of Europe, between the exigencies of black-African culture and those of modern life. — Leopold Sedar Senghor

What if this were Hell, this absence of sleep, this poet's desert, this pain of living, this dying of not dying, this anguish of shadows, this passion over death and light. — Leopold Sedar Senghor

The civilization of the twentieth century cannot be universal except by being a dynamic synthesis of all the cultural values of all civilizations. It will be monstrous unless it is seasoned with the salt of negri-tude, for it will be without the savor of humanity. — Leopold Sedar Senghor