Heart of Darkness Quotes About Imperialism and Racism

These Heart of Darkness quotes cover some pretty heavy topics.

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Heart of Darkness is a novella published in 1889 by Polish-English novelist Joseph Conrad.

The book has been a timeless success and has been republished and translated into many languages.

According to a study by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), racism and discrimination have negative impacts on individuals’ health and well-being, as well as on society as a whole.

The themes of imperialism and racism in Heart of Darkness can spark conversations and raise awareness about these issues, potentially contributing to efforts to combat racism and discrimination.

Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 film Apocalypse Now, was inspired by Heart of Darkness.

In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Heart of Darkness 67th on their list of the 100 best novels in English of the twentieth century.

Many of these Heart of Darkness quotes touch on the story’s main idea of the hypocrisy of imperialism.

Heart of Darkness makes several comments about imperialism and racism, specifically focusing on the idea that there is little difference between “civilized people” and “savages.”

Charles Marlow (the narrator) tells his tale of a trip up the Congo River into the Congo Free State in the Heart of Africa to his friends while aboard a boat anchored on the River Thames.

This setting is the perfect frame for Marlow’s story about his obsession with the successful ivory trader Kurtz.

Conrad uses this to show the parallels between London (“the greatest town on earth”) and Africa as places of darkness.

These Heart of Darkness quotes about the jungle, dreams, and hate will make you feel like you are right there with Marlow on his journey.

If you enjoy this article, check out our most popular quote article, a list of short inspirational quotes for daily motivation. 

Browse our entire collection of inspirational quotes for more motivating ideas and concepts.

Heart of Darkness quotes about the earth and jungle

A report from the Pew Research Center found that racial and ethnic minorities in the United States experience discrimination across a wide range of settings, including the workplace, when interacting with police, and when seeking health care.

The portrayal of racism in Heart of Darkness can provide a window into the experiences of marginalized communities and help readers understand the effects of systemic discrimination.

1. We live as we dream―alone. ― Joseph Conrad

2. It was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice. ― Joseph Conrad

3. While the dream disappears, the life continues painfully. ― Joseph Conrad

4. If anybody had ever struggled with a soul, I am the man. ― Joseph Conrad

5. Your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others. ― Joseph Conrad

6. We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness. ― Joseph Conrad

7. It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core. ― Joseph Conrad

8. I have a voice, too, and for good or evil mine is the speech that cannot be silenced. ― Joseph Conrad

9. Live rightly, die nobly. ― Joseph Conrad

10. His face was like the autumn sky, overcast one moment and bright the next. ― Joseph Conrad

Heart of Darkness quotes about the dreams, the mind, and the soul

A report from the World Economic Forum found that progress towards gender and racial equality has been slow and uneven, and that there is still much work to be done to address systemic inequalities.

By exploring the themes of imperialism and racism in Heart of Darkness, your audience can engage with important conversations about social justice and equity.

11. The earth for us is a place to live in, where we must put up with sights, with sounds, with smells, too, by Jove! – breathe dead hippo, so as to speak, and not be contaminated. ― Joseph Conrad

12. The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil water-way leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed somber under an overcast sky—seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness. ― Joseph Conrad

13. I saw him open his mouth wide… as though he had wanted to swallow all the air, all the earth, all the men before him. ― Joseph Conrad

14. I don’t like work—no man does—but I like what is in the work—the chance to find yourself. Your own reality—for yourself not for others—what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show and never can tell what it really means. ― Joseph Conrad

15. All that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hearts of wild men. ― Joseph Conrad

16. The mind of man is capable of anything―because everything is in it, all the past as well as the future. ― Joseph Conrad

17. But his soul was mad. Being alone in the wilderness, it had looked within itself, and, by heavens, I tell you; it had gone mad. ― Joseph Conrad

18. The moon had spread over everything a thin layer of silver – over the rank grass, over the mud, upon the wall of matted vegetation standing higher than the wall of a temple, over the great river I could see through a somber gap glittering, glittering, as it flowed broadly by without a murmur. All this was great, expectant, mute, while the man jabbered about himself. ― Joseph Conrad

19. They had behind them, to my mind, the terrific suggestiveness of words heard in dreams, of phrases spoken in nightmares. ― Joseph Conrad

20. But his soul was mad. Being alone in the wilderness, it had looked within itself, and, by heavens, I tell you; it had gone mad. ― Joseph Conrad

21. He struggled with himself, too. I saw it — I heard it. I saw the inconceivable mystery of a soul that knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself. ― Joseph Conrad

Short Heart of Darkness quotes that are packed with meaning and feeling

22. In the empty immensity of earth, sky, and water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a continent. ― Joseph Conrad

23. Avoid irritation more than exposure to the sun… In the tropics, one must before everything keep calm. ― Joseph Conrad

24. The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. ― Joseph Conrad

25. We live in the flicker — may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling! But darkness was here yesterday. ― Joseph Conrad

26. The sight of it made the earth seem unearthly. They were accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there—there, you could look at a thing monstrous, beautiful, and free. ― Joseph Conrad

27. Beyond the fence the forest stood up spectrally in the moonlight, and through the dim stir, through the faint sounds of that lamentable courtyard, the silence of the land went home to one’s very heart – its mystery, its greatness, the amazing reality of its concealed life. ― Joseph Conrad

28. The fascination of the abomination. ― Joseph Conrad

29. It was like a weary pilgrimage amongst hints for nightmares. ― Joseph Conrad

30. This was the unbounded power of eloquence—of words—of burning noble words. ― Joseph Conrad

31. A fool, what with sheer fright, and fine sentiments, is always safe. ― Joseph Conrad

Angry and grim Heart of Darkness quotes about hate and death

32. You know I hate, detest, and can’t bear a lie, not because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appalls me. There is a taint of death, a flavor of mortality in lies – which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world ― what I want to forget. ― Joseph Conrad

33. Even extreme grief may ultimately vent itself in violence—but more generally takes the form of apathy. ― Joseph Conrad

34. I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable greyness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamor, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmosphere of tepid skepticism, without much belief in your own right, and still less in that of your adversary. ― Joseph Conrad

35. He has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible, which is also detestable. ― Joseph Conrad

36. I thought his memory was like the other memories of the dead that accumulate in every man’s life—a vague impress on the brain of shadows that had fallen on it in their swift and final passage. ― Joseph Conrad

37. His was an impenetrable darkness. I looked at him as you peer down at a man who is lying at the bottom of a precipice where the sun never shines. ― Joseph Conrad

38. One can’t live with one’s finger everlastingly on one’s pulse. ― Joseph Conrad

39. He hated all this, and somehow he couldn’t get away. ― Joseph Conrad

40. And this stillness of life did not in the least resemble a peace. It was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention. It looked at you with a vengeful aspect. ― Joseph Conrad

41. No eloquence could have been so withering to one’s belief in mankind as his final burst of sincerity. ― Joseph Conrad

Heart of Darkness quotes about life, living, and emotions

42. Droll thing life is—that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself—that comes too late—a crop of inextinguishable regrets. ― Joseph Conrad

43. Like a running blaze on a plain, like a flash of lightning in the clouds. We live in the flicker. ― Joseph Conrad

44. I couldn’t have felt more of lonely desolation somehow, had I been robbed of a belief or had missed my destiny in life. ― Joseph Conrad

45. It was not my strength that wanted nursing. It was my imagination that wanted soothing. ― Joseph Conrad

46. And perhaps in this is the whole difference; perhaps all the wisdom, and all truth, and all sincerity, are just compressed into that inappreciable moment of time in which we step over the threshold of the invisible. ― Joseph Conrad

47. I had no particular desire to enlighten them, but I had some difficulty in restraining myself from laughing in their faces, so full of stupid importance. ― Joseph Conrad

48. It made you feel very small, very lost, and yet it was not altogether depressing that feeling. After all, if you were small, the grimy beetle crawled on – which was just what you wanted it to do. ― Joseph Conrad

49. Besides holding our hearts together through long periods of separation, it had the effect of making us tolerant of each other’s yarns—and even convictions. ― Joseph Conrad

50. No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one’s existence—that which makes its truth, its meaning—its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. ― Joseph Conrad

51. I always went my own road and on my own legs where I had a mind to go. ― Joseph Conrad

Heart of Darkness Quotes To Bring You Memories

52. “When one has got to make correct entries, one comes to hate those savages–hate them to the death.” — Joseph Conrad

53. “Everything belonged to him. It made me hold my breath in expectation of hearing the wilderness burst into prodigious peal of laughter that would shake the fixed stars in their places.” — Joseph Conrad

54. “I prefer to believe the opposite – that there is always an indestructible beauty at the heart of darkness.” — Mary Balogh

55. “And this also,” said Marlow suddenly, “has been one of the dark places of the earth.” — Joseph Conrad

56. “Sadness flies on the wings of the morning, and out of the heart of darkness comes the light.” — Jean Giraudoux

57. “Everything belonged to him–but that was a trifle. The thing to know was what he belonged to, how many powers of darkness claimed him for their own.” — Joseph Conrad

58. “The reaches opened before us and closed behind, as if the forest had stepped leisurely across the water to bar the way for our return.” — Joseph Conrad

59.”When I do a novel, I don’t really use the script, I use the book; when I did Apocalypse Now, I used Heart of Darkness. Novels usually have so much rich material.” — Francis Ford Coppola

60. “Generally in my films like Hearts of Darkness or Picture This, I try not to make myself a presence in the film.” — George Hickenlooper

61. “Leaving New Orleans also frightened me considerably. Outside of the city limits the heart of darkness, the true wasteland begins.” — John Kennedy Toole

Heart of Darkness Quotes From Joseph Conrad

62. “There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies–which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world–what I want to forget.” ― Joseph Conrad

63. “Thames stretched before us like the beginning of an interminable waterway. In the offing the sea and the sky were welded.” ― Joseph Conrad

64. “A horn tooted to the right, and I saw the black people run.” ― Joseph Conrad

65. “I remembered the old doctor,—’It would be interesting for science to watch the mental changes of individuals, on the spot.’ I felt I was becoming scientifically interesting.” ― Joseph Conrad

66. “And this stillness of life did not the least resemble a peace.” ― Joseph Conrad

67. “A blinding sunlight drowned all this at times in a sudden recrudescence of glare.” ― Joseph Conrad

68. “And for a moment it seemed to me as if I also were buried in a vast grave full of unspeakable secrets.” ― Joseph Conrad

69. “We looked at the venerable stream not in the vivid flush of a short day that comes and departs for ever, but in the august light of abiding memories.” ― Joseph Conrad

70. “Men who come out here should have no entrails.” ― Joseph Conrad

71. “We were wanderers on a prehistoric earth, on an earth that wore the aspect of an unknown planet.” ― Joseph Conrad

Lessons learned from the Heart of Darkness

Marlow encounters incidences of torture, cruelty, and near-slavery on his travels from the Outer Station to the Central Station before finally traveling up the river to the Inner Station.

When he arrives at the Centreal Station, they inform him that his steamboat has been damaged, and spends months there getting it back into shape.

He and the manager have several conversations about Kurtz that lead Marlow to realize the manager of the dock resents the ivory trader instead of admiring him.

Once his boat is fixed, he proceeds to Kurtz station only to be attacked along the way.

Marlow learns that Kurtz is ill and suspects that he is mad, based on his unsound methods and his relationship with the natives.

Kurtz dies after giving Marlow papers about his missions, and Marlow himself falls gravely ill.

However, he survives and makes a journey to see Kurtz’s fiance.

He tells her that Kurtz’s last word was her name, when in reality, the trader weakly yelled, “The horror!

The horror!”

If you have any other favorite quotes from Heart of Darkness that didn’t make the list, you can leave them in the comment section below.