Oppressed Quotes - Page 4

• It could never be a correct justification that, because the whites oppressed us yesterday when they had power, that the blacks must oppress them today because they have power.

  Robert Mugabe

  Yesterday, Zimbabwe, Today

  664 Copy quote

• There remains an experience of incomparable value . . . to see the great events of world history from below; from the perspective of the outcast, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed, the reviled ---- in short, from the perspective of those who suffer . . . to look with new eyes on matters great and small.

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  Peace, Eye, Perspective

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1998). “Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Writings”

  24 Copy quote

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• You are either on the side of the oppressed or on the side of the oppressor. You can't be neutral.

  Desmond Tutu

  Sides, Oppressors

  "Desmond Tutu is one of a rare breed" by Cath Elliott, www.theguardian.com. September 17, 2010.

  241 Copy quote

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• Jesus is the starving, the parched, the prisoner, the stranger, the naked, the sick, the dying. Jesus is the oppressed, the poor. To live with Jesus is to live with the poor. To live with the poor is to live with Jesus.

  Jean Vanier

  Jesus, Sick, Dying

  7 Copy quote

• Those who oppressed us described us as the Dark Continent!

  Thabo Mbeki

  Dark, Swag, Continents

  16 Copy quote

• It means a great deal to those who are oppressed to know that they are not alone. And never let anyone tell you that what you are doing is insignificant.

  Desmond Tutu

  Ignorance, Mean, Rights

  44 Copy quote

• Everybody knows there is no fineness or accuracy of suppression; if you hold down one thing, you hold down the adjoining.

  Saul Bellow

  Oppression, Accuracy, Suppression

  The Adventures of Augie March ch. 1 (1953)

  23 Copy quote

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• Attempting to liberate the oppressed without their reflective participation in the act of liberation is to treat them as objects that must be saved from a burning building.

  Paulo Freire

  Burning, Building, Treats

  Paulo Freire (2014). “Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition”, p.46, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

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• You could tell 'The Handmaid's Tale' from a male point of view. People have mistakenly felt that the women are oppressed, but power tends to organise itself in a pyramid. I could pick a male narrator from somewhere in that pyramid. It would interesting.

  Margaret Atwood

  Views, Pyramids, People

  16 Copy quote

• Is this a dagger which I see before me,
  The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.
  I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
  Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
  To feeling as to sight? or art thou but
  A dagger of the mind, a false creation,
  Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?

  William Shakespeare

  Art, Memorable, Sight

  'Macbeth' (1606) act 2, sc. 1, l. 33

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• God's Word teaches a very hard, disturbing truth. Those who neglect the poor and the oppressed are really not God's people at all—no matter how frequently they practice their religious rituals nor how orthodox are their creeds and confessions.

  Ronald J. Sider

  Religious, Truth, Hypocrite

  Ronald J. Sider (2005). “Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger: Moving from Affluence to Generosity”, p.58, Thomas Nelson Inc

  18 Copy quote

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• Religion is against women's rights and women's freedom. In all societies women are oppressed by all religions.

  Taslima Nasrin

  Spiritual, Atheist, Science

  Interview with Kerry O'Brien on "Lateline", ABC TV, 1995.

  8 Copy quote

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• No guarantees come with children's liberation. But neither the promise of great benefits to all nor the prediction of great difficulties ahead can serve as the reason for granting or denying rights to children. Rights will be granted because without them children are incapacitated, oppressed, and abused.

  Richard Farson

  Children, Rights, Promise

  8 Copy quote

• [Let] the poor the needy and oppressed of the Earth, and those who want Land, resort to the fertile lands of our western country, the second land of Promise, and there dwell in peace, fulfilling the first and great commandment.

  George Washington

  Country, Land, Promise

  Jay A. Parry, Andrew M. Allison, George Washington (1991). “The real George Washington”, Natl Center for Constitutional

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• What is surprising is that their ideological opponents, the Marxists - the anti-liberals, the representatives of the oppressed working classes - believed in progress with at least as much passion as the liberals.

  Immanuel Wallerstein

  Passion, Class, Progress

  Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein (1995). “Capistalist Civilisation”, p.97, Verso

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• Interviewer: What would you say to a woman in this country who assumes she is no longer oppressed, who believes women's liberation has been achieved? el Saadawi: Well I would think she is blind. Like many people who are blind to gender problems, to class problems, to international problems. She's blind to what's happening to her.

  Nawal El Saadawi

  Country, Believe, Thinking

  17 Copy quote

• A status not freely chosen or entered into by an individual or a group is necessarily one of oppression and the oppressed are by their nature (i.e., oppressed) forever in ferment and agitation against their condition and what they understand to be their oppressors. If not by overt rebellion or revolution, then in the thousand and one ways they will devise with and without consciousness to alter their condition

  Lorraine Hansberry

  Forever, Agitation, Groups

  38 Copy quote

• she was oppressed, she was overcome by her own felicity; and happily disposed as is the human mind to be easily familiarized with any change for the better, it required several hours to give sedateness to her spirits, or any degree of tranquillity to her heart.

  Jane Austen

  Heart, Giving, Mind

  Jane Austen (2015). “Sense and Sensibility: Top 100 Classic Novels”, p.264, 谷月社

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• But this I know. Those who seek Him will do well to look among the poor and the lowly, the sorrowful and the oppressed.

  Henry Van Dyke

  Looks, Poor, Sorrowful

  Henry van Dyke (2015). “The Story of Other Wise Man”, p.23, Editora Dracaena

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• If there is some corner of the world which has remained peaceful, but with a peace based on injustices the peace of a swamp with rotten matter fermenting in its depths - we may be sure that that peace is false. Violence attracts violence. Let us repeat fearlessly and ceaselessly: injustices bring revolt, either from the oppressed or from the young, determined to fight for a more just and more human world.

  Hélder Câmara

  Fighting, Peaceful, Rotten

  49 Copy quote

• My duty moves along with my song: I am I am not: that is my destiny. I exist not if I do not attend to the pain of those who suffer: they are my pains. For I cannot be without existing for all, for all who are silent and oppressed, I come from the people and I sing for them: my poetry is song and punnishment.

  Pablo Neruda

  Song, Pain, Moving

  Pablo Neruda (2015). “The Poetry of Pablo Neruda”, p.535, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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• If all else fails, we will simply have to drug our attendants, overpower the guards, raise the oppressed peasants to arms, and take over the government.

  Barbara Mertz

  Government, Drug, Arms

  4 Copy quote

• The important task of literature is to free man, not to censor him, and that is why Puritanism was the most destructive and evil force which ever oppressed people and their literature: it created hypocrisy, perversion, fears, sterility.

  Anais Nin

  Fear, Men, People

  11 Copy quote

• A freedom which is interested only in denying freedom must be denied. And it is not true that the recognition of the freedom of others limits my own freedom: to be free is not to have the power to do anything you like; it is to be able to surpass the given toward an open future; the existence of others as a freedom defines my situation and is even the condition of my own freedom. I am oppressed if I am thrown into prison, but not if I am kept from throwing my neighbor into prison.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Able, Limits, Recognition

  Simone de Beauvoir (1948). “The Ethics of Ambiguity”

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• During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to hallow their names to a certain extent for the “consolation” of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it.

  Vladimir Lenin

  Lying, Class, Names

  115 Copy quote