Oppression Quotes - Page 2

And yet it was a fact that if Syme grasped, even for three seconds, the nature of his, Winston's, secret opinions, he would betray him instantly to the Thought Police. So would anybody else for that matter: but Syme more than most. Zeal was not enough. Orthodoxy was unconsciousness.

George Orwell

Be calm when the unthinkable arrives. Modern tyranny is terror management. When the terrorist attack comes, remember that authoritarians exploit such events in order to consolidate power. The sudden disaster that requires the end of checks and balances, the dissolution of political parties, the suspension of freedom of expression, the right to a fair trial, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. DO NOT FALL FOR IT.

Timothy Snyder

And, sincerely, we respect her stance. The Liberal Rednecks are all about standing up for your beliefs even when they’re hateful, bigoted, and go against everything your alleged Lord and Savior stood for. The thing is, doing that would have involved quitting her job—but that’s just something the four-times-married mother was not prepared to do for her faith. Go on TV and be called a hero by powerful politicians who agree with her and her “stand”? Sure, that’s fine. Have the Church pay for her legal bills and prop her up (instead of, oh we don’t know, giving that money to the poor)? Yes, sir. But actually quit instead of breaking an oath (which, by the way, is a sin)? That’s just something Jesus apparently wouldn’t do. Kim Davis is an analogy for Christians at large in the South. She was not oppressed. She was not forced to do anything. She could have quit. The truth is she did not want to quit her job as an elected official. She wanted to bend the political will of those around her so she could prevent other humans from marrying each other because she didn’t like the idea of it. That’s not oppression—that’s someone trying to use the inordinate amount of power they have (over the media and literally as the clerk) to affect the lives of strangers she disagrees with. Guess what that is? Yup. That is oppression.

Trae Crowder

They were erected purposefully to send a strong message to all who walked in their shadows about who was still in charge in this city.

Mitch Landrieu

The old idea, or rather the old prejudice, that women are protected by men was so deeply ingrained in that society that they overlooked what was the most obvious, that is, that the weakest and the disadvantaged are the most exposed.

Ruth Klüger

I was born free, yet today I am in chains. Invisible, they were loosely draped and passed unnoticed until the age of understanding reduced my life to a narrow segment of fear. - Sultana

Jean Sasson

When I look at people talking about intersectionality, what I see is the human being magnifying a biological attribute, and then putting them aside, putting them in a corner as victims of oppression....I most certainly don't see myself as a victim.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Mainly, it’s not that there are things you can’t say. It’s that there are things you can’t say without the risk that people who previously lacked a voice might use their own freedom of speech to object.

Oliver Burkeman

There are no worse oppressors than those who have been oppressed themselves. For they will justify all means of self-preservation, including the persecution and oppression of others to the extent of, and worse than that they had endured. This will weigh heavily on the souls of future generations.

H.N.Ellessy

I walked and walked, sometimes with an objective- a friend's house, a shop, the church or school- but mostly at random, to outrun oppression.

Jessica Anderson

No oppressive order could permit the oppressed to begin to question: Why?

Paulo Freire

In other words, neither oppression nor exploitation as such is ever the main cause for resentment; wealth without visible function is much more intolerable because nobody can understand why it should be tolerated.

Hannah Arendt

When a nation is under oppression for too long, it gets used to it and begins to agree with that oppression

Sunday Adelaja

Elie Wiesel says that neutrality only helps the oppressor, never the victim. And I think you can apply that to journalism.

Jorge Ramos

I swore never to be silent whenever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lies are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Whenever men and women are prosecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must--at that moment--become the center of the universe.

Elie Wiesel

Not being treated as equal IS oppression

Christina Engela

The paradigm of Western culture is that the essence of persons is dangerous; thus, they must be taught, guided and controlled by those with superior authority.

Carl R. Rogers

Isn't it odd that some groups view being legally equal to other groups as 'oppression'?

Christina Engela

Sometimes, the anger built up so much that people had to scream out their treasonous thoughts just to keep on breathing. Maybe not all of the were really crazy, but it was best for everyone involved to pretend that they were.

Ken Liu

Whichever group is in ascension at a given moment is, historically speaking, both unlikely to acknowledge the existence of abuses or bias, and also to justify the bias on any grounds they can - social, biological, what have you.

Elizabeth Bear

Leaders who do not act dialogically, but insist on imposing their decisions, do not organize the people--they manipulate them. They do not liberate, nor are they liberated: they oppress.

Paulo Freire

People get used to anything. The less you think about your oppression, the more your tolerance for it grows. After a while, people just think oppression is the normal state of things. But to become free, you have to be acutely aware of being a slave.

Assata Shakur

Looking at the past must only be a means of understanding more clearly what and who they are so that they can more wisely build the future.

Paulo Freire

Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression. In our Governments, the real power lies in the majority of the Community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from the acts of Government contrary to the sense of its constituents, but from acts in which the Government is the mere instrument of the major number of the constituents.

James Madison

The oppressors do not favor promoting the community as a whole, but rather selected leaders.

Paulo Freire

If you're going to hold someone down you're going to have to hold on by the other end of the chain. You are confined by your own repression.

Toni Morrison

We despise and abhor the bully, the brawler, the oppressor, whether in private or public life, but we despise no less the coward and the voluptuary. No man is worth calling a man who will not fight rather than submit to infamy or see those that are dear to him suffer wrong.

Theodore Roosevelt

The truth is that every intelligent man, as you know, dreams of being a gangster and of ruling over society by force alone. As it is not so easy as the detective novels might lead one to believe, one generally relies on politics and joins the cruelest party.What does it matter, after all, if by humiliating one's mind one succeeds in dominating every one? I discovered in myself sweet dreams of oppression.

Albert Camus

To simply think about the people, as the dominators do, without any self-giving in that thought, to fail to think with the people, is a sure way to cease being revolutionary leaders.

Paulo Freire

Assist your Muslim brother, whether he be an oppressor or oppressed. "Bu how shall we doit when he is an oppressor?" enquired a companion. Muhammad replied, "Assisting an oppressor by forbidding and witholding him from oppression.

Anonymous

Weight and body oppression is oppressive to everyone. When you live in a society that says that one kind of body is bad and and other is good, those with “good” bodies constantly fear that their bodies will go “bad”, and those with “bad” bodies are expected feel shame and do everything they can to have “good” bodies. In the process, we torture our bodies, and do everything from engage in disordered eating to invasive surgery to make ourselves okay. Nobody wins in this kind of struggle.

Golda Poretsky

..the struggle to end sexist oppression that focuses on destroying the cultural basis for such domination strengthens other liberation struggles. Individuals who fight for the eradication of sexism without struggles to end racism or classism undermine their own efforts. Individuals who fight for the eradication of racism or classism while supporting sexist oppression are helping to maintain the cultural basis of all forms of group oppression.

Bell Hooks

OppressionNow dreamsAre not availableTo the dreamers,Nor songsTo the singers.In some landsDark nightAnd cold steelPrevail--But the dreamWill come back,And the songBreakIts jail.

Langston Hughes

An individual excels where the institution fails.

Joel T. McGrath

Perhaps Bug and Tony should have been allies. But any successful structure of domination always gets the weak to reject each other.

William T. Vollmann

No woman is responsible for altering the psyche of her oppressor, even when that psyche is embodied in another woman.

Audre Lorde

Oppressed peoples are always being asked to stretch a little more, to bridge the gap between blindness and humanity.

Audre Lorde

... [T]he other lesson history has taught us - that tyranny and oppression are no match for compassion ... that the fanatical shouts of the bullies of the world are invariably silenced by the unified voices of decency that rise up to meet them.

Dan Brown

By saying that human issues are more important than non-human issues, that violence to humans is more relevant than violence to animals, one forgets that the animal liberation movement implies a message of peace for every being on earth and the opposition against the mindset of oppression. To make a distinction between one violence and another is exactly the root of all violence: Some wouldn't do any harm to those who share with them a flag, a religion, a language, etc. but would easily condemn to suffering and death those who are different. This tragic use of diversity as an excuse to inflict pain on others for a matter of profit and convenience is the cause of suffering for both human and non-human animals.

Mango Wodzak

It is not easy to escape mentally from a concrete situation, to refuse its ideology while continuing to live with its actual relationships.

Albert Memmi

Do remember, though, that sometimes the people you oppress become mightier than you would like.

Veronica Roth

Voldemort himself created his worst enemy, just as tyrants everywhere do! Have you any idea how much tyrants fear the people they oppress? All of them realize that, one day, amongst their many victims, there is sure to be one who rises against them and strikes back!

J.K. Rowling

It's no accident that the countries that have enjoyed an economic take off have been those that educated girls and then gave them the autonomy to move to the cities to find work

Sheryl WuDunn

Hatred of oppression still distorts the features, Anger at injustice still makes voices raised and ugly. Oh we, who wished to lay for the foundations for peace and friendliness,Could never be friendly ourselves.

Bertolt Brecht

If you grow up in a WEIRD society, you become so well educated in the ethic of autonomy that you can detect oppression and inequality even where the apparent victims see nothing wrong.

Jonathan Haidt

The universe was playing with loaded dice, which insured an excess of cowards in our ranks.

Ta-Nehisi Coates

I think the only choice that will enable us to hold to our vision is one that abandons the concept of naming enemies and adopts a concept familiar to the nonviolent tradition: naming behavior that is oppressive

Barbara Deming

Do you want to make it impossible for anyone to oppress his fellow-man? Then make sure that no one shall possess power.

Mikhail Bakunin

First oppression is made into an excuse for terrorism, and then terrorism is made into an excuse for oppression.

Michael Walzer

Society's revenge matched its fright.

Barbara W. Tuchman

Those who are truly alive are kindly and unsuspecting in their human relationships and consequently endangered under present conditions. They assume that others think and act generously, kindly and helpfully, in accordance with the laws of life. This natural attitude, fundamental to healthy children as well as primitive man, inevitably represents a great danger in the struggle for a rational way of life as long as the emotional plague subsists, because the plague-ridden impute their own manner of thinking and acting to their fellow men. A kindly man believes that all men are kindly, while one infected with the plague believes that all men lie and cheat and are hungry for power. In such a situation, the living are at an obvious disadvantage. When they give to the plague-ridden they are sucked dry, then ridiculed or betrayed.

Wilhelm Reich

If it would destroy [a 12-year-old boy] to be called a girl, what are we then teaching him about girls?

Tony Porter

Remember: Oppression thrives off isolation. Connection is the only thing that can save us.

Yolo Akili

When opposition presses (OPPRESSION) one has to persevere, press, push back but never allow yourself to be pressed like a grape unless the juice is your victory wine.

Eveth Colley

ABYSSOur country livesAmong the deadAnd dies among the livingSometimes.

Visar Zhiti

In every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to deceive and overawe the Pe

Eugene V. Debs

That frontier operated as a rough and ready homeostatic device; the more a state pressed its subjects, the fewer subjects it had. The frontier underwrote popular freedom.

James C. Scott

When the clouds over the land rise like a mountain, a long with it's wishes, it can never cover the errors and mistakes made by Kings.

Auliq-Ice

Power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed.

Wally Lamb

In Warsaw, you also remember that you are in a Communist-controlled country, though by all accounts the control is now humane and lenient, judged by what it was and what it is in other satellite countries. Still you do hear the incompetent echo in the tapped hotel telephone, you do notice that people look over their shoulders when talking in restaurants - the secret police are dormant but not forgotten; you feel in your bones, as you would a threatening change in the weather, every change in Russian mood or action. This is not and air we have ever breathed; I doubt if we would be strong enough to resist such a climate and stay as healthy in spirit as the Poles.

Martha Gellhorn

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Oppression Quotes - Page 2

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