Oppression Quotes - Page 3

A hero is one who can never stop fighting for truth no matter the oppression

Immediate necessity makes many things convenient, which if continued would grow into oppressions. Expedience and right are different things.

Thomas Paine

But in Ward 9 the air had a real quality, it clamped itself over your face like a pad of cotton wool, soaked through with the sweet chloroform of utter sadness. - Ward 9

Will Self

This condition in which women live is created out of, and defended by, a system of ideas represented by the world's religions, by psychoanalysis, by pornography, by sexology, by science and medicine and the social sciences.

Sheila Jeffreys

The oppressor is never as free as they think they are

Darnell Lamont Walker

The thing about oppression is this: when you hold someone down, you, too, have to be there to make sure they don't move.

Darnell Lamont Walker

e have men sold to build churches, women sold to support the gospel, and babes sold to purchase Bibles for the poor heathen, all for the glory of God and the good of souls. The slave auctioneer's bell and the church-going bell chime in with each other, and the bitter cries of the heart-broken slave are drowned in the religious shouts of his pious master. Revivals of religion and revivals in the slave trade go hand in hand.

Frederick Douglass

The slaves who were ourselves had known terror intimately, confused sunrise with pain, & accepted indifference as kindness.

Ntozake Shange

No one forgets that they were once captive, even if they are now free.

Yaa Gyasi

You can't hold a man down without staying down with him.

Booker T. Washington

If we know one thing from experience it is that oppression does not crush rebellion, no matter how it tries,' I told him. 'It breeds it anew with every tyrannical act.

Isobelle Carmody

We do not require man’s religion for salvation. We do not believe in anything that forces people to keep their places in this world.

Thomm Quackenbush

You know and I know that the country is celebrating one hundred years of freedom one hundred years too early. We cannot be free until they are free.

James Baldwin

All religions, in their pure form, will tell you God is Love. And power, fear, division, judgment, oppression, hatred and self-righteousness are the opposite of Love. So going to war, for example, in the name of religion, is a complete contradiction. No pure religious leader would ever support this.

The Truth

The masculine ideal of perfection creates a hyper-sensitivity to any nuance of imperfection. Any man who commits his life to the perfectionistic ideal of masculinity is going to feel like a failure. The people around him will feel abused and oppressed by him. The only way to do things is his way, the right way, the ideal way. Every man who succeeds at this game will wind up in the same place: Alone in his victory. At the top of the pyramid there’s no room for anyone else.

Mary Crocker Cook

The tyrant grinds down his slaves and they don't turn against him, they crush those beneath them.

Emily Brontë

However miserable you make us, we shall still have the revenge of thinking that your cruelty arises from your greater misery.

Emily Brontë

In our native terms, the ironic style is often compounded with the sardonic and the hard-boiled; even the effortlessly superior. But irony originates in the glance and the shrug of the loser, the outsider, the despised minority. It is a nuance that comes most effortlessly to the oppressed.

Christopher Hitchens

The masters and overseers were so good at employee development, in their absence, the employees still achieved the company's mission

Darnell Lamont Walker

Narcissists often feign oppression because narcissists always feel entitled.

Criss Jami

Ignore the voice that scorns and ridicules to ensure it does not mold you. Stifling subtleties like these, if unchecked, are oppressive. Freedom is a love supreme birthright, not a privilege to be governed by any other.

T.F. Hodge

Millions of couples out there practiced the art of sadomasochism every day, without even realizing it. They went to work, came back, complained about everything, insulted their wife or were insulted by her, felt wretched, but were, nonetheless, tightly bound to their own unhappiness, not realizing that all it would take was a single gesture, a final goodbye, to free them from that oppression.

Paulo Coelho

A commitment to sexual equality with men is a commitment to becoming the rich instead of the poor, the rapist instead of the raped, the murderer instead of the murdered.

Andrea Dworkin

It is difficult to exaggerate the adverse influence of the precepts and practices of religion upon the status and happiness of woman. Owing to the fact that upon women devolves the burden of motherhood, with all its accompanying disabilities, they always have been, and always must be, at a natural disadvantage in the struggle of life as compared with men....With certain exceptions, women all the world over have been relegated to a position of inferiority in the community, greater or less according to the religion and the social organisation of the people; the more religious the people the lower the status of the women...

Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner

After centuries of marginalization and neglect, we need to cast our own movements, projects, and ideas as a battle for relevancy in the face of historical manipulation, exploitation, and oppression. We need to fight, tooth and nail, for equity in all areas of social life. One point to make clear, ethnic and racial minorities are not looking for scraps or a handout from the old paternalistic system but an equitable, stable, and leveled playing field.

Martin Guevara Urbina

When You’re Accustomed to Privilege, Equality Feels Like Oppression

Unknown

Let me tell you about gods," said Wiggin. "No matter how smart or strong you are, there's always somebody smarter or stronger, and when you run into somebody who's stronger and smarter than anybody, you think, This is a god. This is perfection. But I can promise you that there's somebody else somewhere else who'll make your god look like a maggot by comparison. And somebody smarter or stronger or better in some way. So let me tell you what I think about gods. I think a real god is not going to be so scared or angry that he tries to keep other people down. For Congress to genetically alter people to make them smarter and more creative, that could have been a godlike, generous gift. But they were scared, so they hobbled the people of Path. They wanted to stay in control. A real god doesn't care about control. A real god already has control of everything that needs controlling. Real gods would want to teach you how to be just like them.

Orson Scott Card

If we have learned anything from the liberation movements, we should have learned how difficult it is to be aware of the ways in which we discriminate until they are forcefully pointed out to us. A liberation movement demands an expansion of our moral horizons, so that practices that were previously regarded as natural and inevitable are now seen as intolerable.

Peter Singer

The revolution of today is the oppression of tomorrow.

Bryant McGill

We preach revolution but whine about the oppression in the name of change

Goitsemang Mvula

Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence?

Paolo Freire

The true focus of revolutionary change is never merely the oppressive situations which we seek to escape, but that piece of the oppressor which is planted deep within each of us, and which knows only the oppressors' tactics, the oppressors' relationships.

Audre Lorde

When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organize itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms, and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.In place of the old bourgeois society with its classes and class antagonisms we shall have an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.

Karl Marx

Bigotry may be roughly defined as the anger of men who have no opinions. It is the resistance offered to definite ideas by that vague bulk of people whose ideas are indefinite to excess. Bigotry may be called the appalling frenzy of the indifferent. This frenzy of the indifferent is in truth a terrible thing; it has made all monstrous and widely pervading persecutions. In this degree it was not the people who cared who ever persecuted; the people who cared were not sufficiently numerous. It was the people who did not care who filled the world with fire and oppression. It was the hands of the indifferent that lit the faggots; it was the hands of the indifferent that turned the rack. There have come some persecutions out of the pain of a passionate certainty; but these produced, not bigotry, but fanaticism--a very different and a somewhat admirable thing. Bigotry in the main has always been the pervading omnipotence of those who do not care crushing out those who care in darkness and blood.

G.K. Chesterton

A tear slipped from eye, as I stood helpless beside Kiran. “They have done nothing wrong, except fight for the freedom you have stolen from them, from all of us!” I shouted back, unable to stay silent when my friends stood at his mercy.“I give you freedom, the freedom to live your life as you please,” Lucan challenged, tilting his chin with pride and sincerity. “I ask nothing of you, except for your loyalty. I am the king, it is the least of what I deserve,” Lucan turned to address the kingdom, his argument ringing through the air.“Then why is it only your bloodline that is allowed immortality?” I argued, taking a step forward. “Why do the rest of our people suffer from the separation of races? Why are the Shape-shifters exiled by penalty of death? What have they done? What is their crime? Are you afraid to share true immortality? Are you so scared of a people that realize they don’t need a king?” I turned to face the crowd too, hoping to empower them with my words.

Rachel Higginson

When I write, I try to represent the voices of people I've known who had no voice.

Carla H. Krueger

I read once, and I wished I could remember where, that Brave was a place. You could just go there if you wanted. There were dozens of Braves, everywhere, all over the world, where ordinary people stood up to tyranny and oppression.

Katherine Locke

BLOODY LIPSThe bloody woundOf the gladiatorGurgles out life's end.The cries of acclimations from the standsFill the sky with raging tigers.Waving their arms about to incite the massesThe aging notables add an air of dignity to the arena.Making their separate entriestheyKNEELover the still-warm corpsesOf the young. Their withered lips they poseUpon the fresh flowing woundsAnd, to prolong their lives – so they believe,Suck, ravenously suck out the blood, blood, blood.Fresh blood from the sunFlowing into filthy veinsAs into sewage pipes,And thus the Heart of the Nation is abandoned.

Visar Zhiti

Look, people need to conform the external reality they face daily with this subjective feeling they likewise experience constantly. To do this they have two options. First, they can achieve what passes for great things. Now the external reality matches their feeling; they really are better than the rest and maybe they'll even be remembered as such. These are the ambitious people, the overachievers. These are also, however, the people who go on these abominable talk shows where they can trade their psychoses for exposure on that box, modernity's ultimate achievement. Not that this tact, being ambitious, is not the preferred course of action. The reason is it's the equivalent of sticking your neck out which we all know is dangerous. Instead many act like they have no ambition whatsoever. Their necks come back in and they're safe. Only problem is now they're at everyone else's level, which we've seen is untenable. The remedy of course is that everyone else needs to be sunk. This helps explain racism's enduring popularity. If I myself don't appear to be markedly superior to everyone else at least I'm part of the better race, country, religion et cetera. This in turn reflects well on my individual worth. There are other options, of course. For example, you can constantly bemoan others' lack of moral worth by extension elevating yourself. Think of the average person's reaction to our clients. Do these people strike you as so truly righteous that they are viscerally pained by our clients' misdeeds or are they similarly flawed people looking for anything to hang their hat on? The latter obviously, they're vermin.

Sergio de la Pava

At first glance it seems strange that the attitude of the anti-Semite can be equated with that of the negrophobe. It was my philosophy teacher from the Antilles who reminded me one day: “When you hear someone insulting the Jews pay attention; he is talking about you.” And I believed at the time he was universally right, meaning that I was responsible in my body and my soul for the fate reserved for my brother. Since then, I have understood that what he meant quite simply was the anti-Semite is inevitably a negrophobe.

Frantz Fanon

In both cases, it is the prejudice, not the condition, that does the harm. It may be, as some would have it, that blacks are inherently inferior to whites or that homosexuals are all, by definition, sick. So what? Even if either condition truly is inherently undesirable, no manner of social pressure will turn blacks into whites or gays into straights. Social pressure will only exaggerate the handicap. It is still the prejudice, more than the condition, that does the harm.

Andrew Tobias

«Couldn't never be nothin' but a nigger, if I was ever so good,» said Topsy. «If I could be skinned, and come white, I'd try then.»

Harriet Beecher Stowe

We who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface hidden tension that is already alive

Martin Luther King Jr.

My heart isn't big enough to care for the oppressors.

Darnell Lamont Walker

You can't forgive your captor and simultaneously be upset at your place in society.

Darnell Lamont Walker

Other unsolved murders or untimely deaths were readily blamed on the supposedly sinister Jews: If a Jewish doctor failed to save a life, the whole Jewish community might be attacked and fined.

Robert Winder

All we can infer (from the archaeological shards dug up in Berkshire, Devon and Yorkshire) is that the first Britons, whoever they were and however they came, arrived from elsewhere. The land (Britain) was once utterly uninhibited. Then people came.

Robert Winder

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

H.N.Ellessy

Tolerance of intolerance enables oppression.

DaShanne Stokes

White people covered the earth like lice.

Louise Erdrich

Saying something is 'politically correct' is often a way of dismissing the voices of the oppressed.

DaShanne Stokes

It speaks volumes when people who are discriminated against go on to discriminate against others.

DaShanne Stokes

Standing against discrimination for some while supporting discrimination against others hurts us all.

DaShanne Stokes

It is scarcely the same thing to put a man on the Moon as to put a bone in your nose.

William A. Henry III

We first crush people to the earth, and then claim the right of trampling on them forever, because they are prostrate.

Lydia Maria Francis Child

Becoming conscious of racism does not mean you are a racist.

Auliq-Ice

...the majority in a democracy has no more right to tyrannize over a minority than, under a different system, the latter would to oppress the former.

Theodore Roosevelt

The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return.

Gore Vidal

...people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

Neil Postman

P15 - Our advanced technological society is rapidly making objects of us and subtly programming us into conformity to the logic of its system to the degree that this happens, we are also becoming submerged in a new "Culture of Silence".

Paulo Freire

Previous 1 2 3 4 5 … 8 Next

Oppression Quotes - Page 3

Related Topics