Oppressed Quotes - Page 5

• I don’t mind expressing my opinions and speaking out against injustice. I would be doing this even if I wasn’t a writer. I grew up in a household that believed in social justice. I have always understood myself as having an obligation to stand on the side of the silenced, the oppressed, and the mistreated.

  Tayari Jones

  Justice, Mind, Sides

  "Tayari Jones Knows Why She Sings". Interview with Ru Freeman, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 9, 2012.

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• Poor and afflicted and oppressed people have faces, and we are required to look squarely into them. We can't love what we won't experience.

  Nancy Mairs

  People, Looks, Poverty

  Nancy Mairs (1993). “Ordinary Time: Cycles in Marriage, Faith, and Renewal”, Beacon Press (MA)

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• Perhaps it is time to debate culture. The common story is that in "real" African culture, before it was tainted by the west, gender roles were rigid and women were contentedly oppressed.

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  Real, West, Culture

  "Nigeria's immorality is about hypocrisy, not miniskirts" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, www.theguardian.com. April 2, 2008.

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• But perhaps the most important innovation in the doctrine of jihad was its outright prohibition of all but strictly defensive wars. “Fight in the way of God those who fight you,” the Quran says, “but do not begin hostilities; God does not like the aggressor” (2:190). Elsewhere the Quran is more explicit: “Permission to fight is given only to those who have been oppressed ... who have been driven from their homes for saying, 'God is our Lord' ” (22:39; emphasis added).

  Reza Aslan

  War, Home, Fighting

  Reza Aslan (2008). “No God But God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam”, p.84, Random House

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• Our task is not to liberate the oppressed, but to liberate the oppressors

  Nelson Mandela

  Tasks, Oppressors

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• The oppressed martyrs of our culture have shed blood that nourish the red tulips of our nation.

  Mahmud Tarzi

  Blood, Culture, Red

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• When a human being is oppressed, the natural tendency is to feel anger. Jazz is a response to oppression that is not bullets and blood. Jazz is the expression of harmony ... and at the same time of hope and freedom.

  Herbie Hancock

  Expression, Blood, Bullets

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• Your generous part in my liberation is taken by the world for the revelation of the fact, that the United States are resolved not to allow the despots of the world to trample on oppressed humanity.

  Lajos Kossuth

  Taken, Tyrants, Humanity

  Lajos Kossuth (1853). “Select speeches, condensed and abridged by F.W. Newman”, p.24

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• No race has the last word on culture and on civilization. You do not know what the black man is capable of; you do not know what he is thinking and therefore you do not know what the oppressed and suppressed Negro, by virtue of his condition and circumstance, may give to the world as a surprise.

  Marcus Garvey

  Men, Thinking, Race

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• Let's put one lie to rest for all time: the lie that men are oppressed, too, by sexism-the lie that there can be such a thing as men's liberation groups.

  Robin Morgan

  Lying, Men, Groups

  Robin Morgan (2014). “Going Too Far: The Personal Chronicle of a Feminist”, p.116, Open Road Media

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• We should be less concerned about hurting the feelings of the oppressors and more concerned about standing in solidarity with the oppressed.

  Remi Kanazi

  Hurt, Feelings, Should

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• Palestinians are not victims in need of aid, they are an occupied & oppressed people in need of freedom.

  Remi Kanazi

  People, Needs, Victim

  FaceBook post by Remi Kanazi from Nov 19, 2012

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• I've spent fifteen years of my life fighting for our right to be free and make love whenever, wherever... And you're telling me that all those years of what being gay stood for is wrong... and I'm a murderer. We have been so oppressed! Don't you remember how it was? Can't you see how important it is for us to love openly, without hiding and without guilt?

  Larry Kramer

  Fighting, Gay, Years

  Larry Kramer (2000). “The Normal Heart and the Destiny of Me: Two Plays”, p.97, Grove Press

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• The Palestinian cause is not a cause for Palestinians only, but a cause for every revolutionary, wherever he is, as a cause of the exploited and oppressed masses in our era.

  Ghassan Kanafani

  Eras, Causes, Revolutionary

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• We, the workers and inhabitants of St Petersburg, of various estates, our wives, our children, and our aged, helpless parents, come to THEE, O SIRE to seek justice and protection. We are impoverished; we are oppressed, overburdened with excessive toil, contemptuously treated . . . We are suffocating in despotism and lawlessness. O SIRE we have no strength left, and our endurance is at an end. We have reached that frightful moment when death is better than the prolongation of our unbearable sufferings. . .

  Orlando Figes

  Children, Justice, Wife

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• Finally and long overdue, your people, oppressed and disgraced by hatred and maliciousness, have achieved justice: now you enjoy full citizen's rights, but you'll remain Jews nonetheless.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Rights, People, Justice

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• Had middle class black women begun a movement in which they had labeled themselves "oppressed," no one would have taken them seriously.

  Bell Hooks

  Taken, Class, African American

  bell hooks (2014). “Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center”, p.7, Routledge

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• The worries that are the burden of which the privileged person makes an excuse in dealing with the oppressed person are in fact the worries about preserving his privileged condition.

  Franz Kafka

  Worry, Facts, Privilege

  Franz Kafka (1991). “The Blue Octavo Notebooks”

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• The subtlest and most vicious aspect of women's oppression is that we have been conditioned to believe we are not oppressed, blinded so as not to see our own condition.

  Robin Morgan

  Believe, Oppression, Aspect

  Robin Morgan (2014). “The Word of a Woman: Feminist Dispatches”, p.25, Open Road Media

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• The classic trap for any revolutionary is always, “What's your alternative?” But even if you could provide the interrogator with a blueprint, this does not mean he would use it: in most cases he is not sincere in wanting to know. In fact this is a common offensive, a technique to reflect revolutionary anger and turn it against itself. Moreover, the oppressed have no job to convince all people. All they need know is that the present system is destroying them.

  Shulamith Firestone

  Jobs, Mean, People

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• Solidarity is learned through 'contact' rather than 'concepts.' Students in the course of their formation, must let the gritty reality of this world into their lives, so they can learn to feel it, think about it critically, respond to its suffering and engage it constructively. They should learn to perceive, think, judge, choose and act for the rights of others, especially the disadvantaged and the oppressed.

  Peter Hans Kolvenbach

  Reality, Thinking, Rights

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• Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  People, Forever, Yearning

  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (2013). “"In a Single Garment of Destiny": A Global Vision of Justice”, p.18, Beacon Press

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• Black people in America have come from slavery to other forms of being oppressed and there are some things that come with that - some pain and anger that come with that and we as black people have to deal with it to heal that. White people have to understand it and have some compassion toward it.

  Common

  Pain, Compassion, White

  Source: www.esquire.com

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• With a whirl of thought oppressed
  I sink from reverie to rest.
  An horrid vision seized my head,
  I saw the graves give up their dead.

  Jonathan Swift

  Giving Up, Thoughtful, Thinking

  Jonathan Swift, Alexander Norman Jeffares (1992). “The selected poems”

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• I affect no contempt for the high eminence he [Senator Stephen Douglas] has reached. So reached, that the oppressed of my species,might have shared with me in the elevation, I would rather stand on that eminence, than wear the richest crown that ever pressed a monarch's brow.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Ambition, Crowns, Might

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