Oppressed Quotes - Page 11

• The masses never revolt of their own accord, and they never revolt merely because they are oppressed. Indeed, so long as they are not permitted to have standards of comparison, they never even become aware that they are oppressed.

  George Orwell

  Long, Mass, Standards

  George Orwell, A.M. Heath (2003). “Animal Farm and 1984”, p.299, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Death is not "an eternal sleep!" Citizens! efface from the tomb that motto, graven by sacrilegious hands, which spreads over all nature a funereal crape, takes from oppressed innocence its support, and affronts the beneficent dispensation of death! Inscribe rather thereon these words: "Death is the commencement of immortality!"

  Maximilien Robespierre

  Sleep, Hands, Support

  Last speech to the National Convention, www.bartleby.com. July 26, 1794.

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• As the American Muslim community gets a little bit freer in terms of not being under the thumb of that kind of oppressive mentality, there is going to be some internal dissent. When you are consciously oppressed, you tend to sort of band together and unite because there's a necessity to do so. And that as that proceeds, some of those difference get more into the fore and I think that's the reason you are seeing some internal dissension as a byproduct of the fact that there is not this kind of immediate urgency to unify against this kind of onslaught because that onslaught is refuted.

  Glenn Greenwald

  Thinking, Community, Together

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• Fighting, and the employment of force, even for the right cause, will not bring about good results. The oppressed who have right on their side, must not take that right by force; the evil would continue. Hearts must be changed. The rich must wish to give! Life in man should be like a flame, warming all with whom it comes into contact. The spiritually awakened are like to bright torches in the sight of God, they give light and comfort to their fellows.

  Abdu'l-Bahá

  Heart, Fighting, Men

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• Why is the sea king of a hundred streams? Because it lies below them... If the sage would guide the people, he must serve with humility. If he would lead them, he must follow behind. In this way when the sage rules, the people will not feel oppressed.

  Laozi

  Kings, Lying, Humility

  Laozi (1997). “道德经”, Vintage

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• Let us be today's Christians. Let us not take fright at the boldness of today's church. With Christ's light let us illuminate even the most hideous caverns of the human person: torture, jail, plunder, want, chronic illness. The oppressed must be saved, not with a revolutionary salvation, in mere human fashion, but with the holy revolution of the Son of Man, who dies on the cross to cleanse God's image, which is soiled in today's humanity, a humanity so enslaved, so selfish, so sinful.

  Oscar Romero

  Christian, Fashion, Selfish

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• Regardless of what the law or your teachers have to say about this, you are as human as anyone over the age of 18 or 21, yet, 'minors' are one of the most oppressed groups of people in the world, and certainly the most discriminated against legally.

  Grace Llewellyn

  Teacher, Law, People

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• Jerusalem the Golden,
  With milk and honey blest,
  eneath thy contemplation
  Sink heart and voice oppressed.

  John Mason Neale

  Blessed, Heart, Milk And Honey

  "Collected Hymns, Sequences and Carols of John Mason Neale".

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• No civilization can exist part free and part slave.
  
  ..We have never had any other kind of civilization. It has always been that way. There has always been a division of man. There has always been the conqueror and conquered-the master and slave-the ruler and the ruled-the oppressor and the oppressed. There has never been content nor unity. There has been only discontent and disunity.

  Walter Russell

  Men, Civilization, Historical

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• We [Panthers] have not said much about the homosexual at all, but we must relate to the homosexual movement because it is a real thing. And I know through reading, and through my life experience and observations that homosexuals are not given freedom and liberty by anyone in the society. They might be the most oppresed people in the society.

  Huey Newton

  Real, Reading, People

  "Read Black Panther Co-Founder Huey Newton’s 1970 Speech About Gay Rights" by Peter Knegt, www.indiewire.com. May 18, 2012.

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• For there is no sex. There is but sex that is oppressed and sex that oppresses. It is oppression that creates sex and not the contrary.

  Monique Wittig

  Sex, Oppression, Contrary

  Monique Wittig (1992). “The Straight Mind: And Other Essays”, Beacon Press (MA)

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• I want you to understand that I respect the rights of the poorest and weakest of colored people, oppressed by the slave system, just as much as I do those of the most wealthy and powerful. That is the idea that has moved me, and that alone.

  John Brown

  Powerful, Rights, Ideas

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• Obviously the most oppressed of any oppressed group will be its women

  Lorraine Hansberry

  Groups

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• At the last dim horizon, we search among ghostly errors of observations for landmarks that are scarcely more substantial. The search will continue. The urge is older than history. It is not satisfied and it will not be oppressed.

  Edwin Powell Hubble

  Errors, Horizon, Lasts

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• Remember, there are two things that keep us oppressed: them and us. We are half of the equation. There will not be a magic day when we wake up and it's now OK to express ourselves publicly. We must make that day ourselves, by speaking out publicly -- first in small numbers, then in greater numbers, until it's simply the way things are and no one thinks twice. Never doubt that we will create this world, because, my friends, we are fortunate to live in a democracy, and in a democracy, we decide what's possible.

  Tammy Baldwin

  Thinking, Small Numbers, Two

  "Tammy Baldwin, Our Voice of the Future" by Kristen Hotham Carroll, www.huffingtonpost.com. November 7, 2012.

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• The hell of human suffering, evil and oppression is paved with good intentions. The men who have most injured and oppressed humanity, who have most deeply sinned against it, were according to their standards and their conscience good men; what was bad in them, what wrought moral evil and cruelty, treason to truth and progress, was not at all in their intentions, in their purpose, in their personal character, but in their opinions.

  Robert Briffault

  Character, Men, Evil

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• It was during those long and lonely years that my hunger for the freedom of my own people became a hunger for the freedom of all people, white and black. I knew as well as I knew anything that the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed.

  Nelson Mandela

  Lonely, Years, White

  Nelson Mandela (2013). “Long Walk To Freedom”, p.404, Hachette UK

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• This notion that's peddled by the religious right - that they are oppressed is not true. Sometimes it's a cynical ploy to move their agenda ahead. The classic example being that somehow secularists are trying to eliminate Christmas, which strikes me as some kind of manufactured controversy.

  Barack Obama

  Religious, Moving, Cynical

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• The working classes may be injuriously degraded and oppressed in three ways:
  1st - When they are neglected in infancy
  
  2nd - When they are overworked by their employer, and are thus rendered incompetent from ignorance to make a good use of high wages when they can procure them.
  
  3rd - When they are paid low wages for their labour.

  Robert Owen

  Ignorance, Class, Use

  "Two Memorials on Behalf of the Working Classes". Book by Robert Owen, 1818.

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• When everybody in the world loves one another, then the weak will not be overpowered by the strong, the few will not be oppressed by the many, the poor will not be mocked by the wealthy, the humble will not be disdained by the honoured, and the simple will not be deceived by the cunning.

  Motsi Mabuse

  Love, Strong, Humble

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• What does Christianity mean today? National Socialism is a religion. All we lack is a religious genius capable of uprooting outmoded religious practices and putting new ones in their place. We lack traditions and ritual. One day soon National Socialism will be the religion of all Germans. My Party is my church, and I believe I serve the Lord best if I do his will, and liberate my oppressed people from the fetters of slavery. That is my gospel.

  Joseph Goebbels

  Religious, Party, Believe

  Diary entry, October 16, 1928.

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• The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the "state of emergency" in which we live is not the exception but the rule.

  Walter Benjamin

  Emergencies, Tradition, States

  Walter Benjamin, Michael William Jennings (2003). “Selected Writings: 1938-1940”, p.392, Harvard University Press

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• What would happen if capital succeeded in smashing the Republic of Soviets? There would set in an era of the blackest reaction in all the capitalist and colonial countries, the working class and the oppressed peoples would be seized by the throat, the positions of international communism would be lost.

  Joseph Stalin

  Country, Class, Would Be

  "On the Opposition" by J. V. Stalin, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1974.

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• the more we are oppressed by the cross, the fuller will be our spiritual joy.

  John Calvin

  Spiritual, Joy, Crosses

  John Calvin (2004). “Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life”, p.66, Baker Books

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• The Irish Republic must be made a word to conjure with - a rallying point for the disaffected, a haven for the oppressed, a point of departure for the socialist, enthusiastic in the cause of human freedom.

  James Connolly

  Rallying Point, Departure, Republic

  James Connolly, Peter Berresford-Ellis (1988). “James Connolly: Selected Writings”, p.122, Pluto Press

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