Oppressed Quotes - Page 8

• 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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• In order to perpetuate itself, every oppression must corrupt or distort those various sources of power within the culture of the oppressed that can provide energy for change.

  Audre Lorde

  Order, Energy, Culture

  Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.53, Crossing Press

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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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• No sincere desire of doing good need make an enemy of a single human being; that philanthropy has surely a flaw in it which cannot sympathize with the oppressor equally as with the oppressed.

  James Russell Lowell

  Enemy, Desire, Needs

  James Russell Lowell (1844). “Poems”

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• Being a victim of oppression in the United States is not enough to make you revolutionary, just as dropping out of your mother's womb is not enough to make you human. People who are full of hate and anger against their oppressors or who only see Us versus Them can make a rebellion but not a revolution. The oppressed internalize the values of the oppressor. Therefore, any group that achieves power, no matter how oppressed, is not going to act differently from their oppressors as long as they have not confronted the values that they have internalized and consciously adopted different values.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  Mother, Hate, Long

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• A tolerant person should not be harrased. The subject or the ruled ones generally is loyal to the ruler. The people tak to revolt when they are helpless. The duty of the ruler is that his humble people mey not tak to revolt being suppressed by his bad polity. Considering the forbearance of the subject, do not ill behave with them so that they may feel oppressed.

  Chanakya

  Humble, People, Political

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• In order to create an alternative an oppressed group must at once shatter the self-reflecting world which encircles it and, at the same time, project its own image onto history.

  Sheila Rowbotham

  Self, Order, Speaking Up

  Sheila Rowbotham (1999). “Threads Through Time: Writings on History and Autobiography”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

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• You have discovered so much kindness and good will to those you thought were oppressed, and had no helper, that I am sure you will not despise what I have wrote, if you judge it will be of any service to them.

  Jupiter Hammon

  Kindness, Judging, Despise

  Jupiter Hammon, Stanley Austin Ransom (1983). “America's first Negro poet: the complete works of Jupiter Hammon of Long Island”, Associated Faculty Pr Inc

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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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• 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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• 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 live in a world with serious class complexes. It is one thing to be a college student with loan debts and another thing to be just dirt poor for your entire life. The challenge is to come up with more complex understandings of where we are, more global awareness of what connects Americans with what is happening with suffering and oppressed people all around the world.

  Bell Hooks

  College, Class, People

  Source: bknation.org

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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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• 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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• 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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• Throughout my life, I have always supported the human being in his humanism and I have supported the oppressed. I think it is the person's right to live his freedom and it is her and his right to face the injustice imposed on each by revolting against it, using his practical, realistic and available means to end the oppressor's injustice toward him, whether it is an individual, a community, a nation, or a state; whether male or female.

  Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah

  Mean, Thinking, Community

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• all theology knowingly or not is by definition always engaged for or against the oppressed.

  Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza

  Religion, Definitions, Theology

  Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza (1984). “Bread Not Stone: The Challenge of Feminist Biblical Interpretation”, Beacon Press (MA)

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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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• a poet will even face death when he sees his people oppressed.

  Carolina Maria de Jesus

  People, Faces, Poet

  Carolina Maria de Jesus (2005). “Beyond All Pity”

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• Age after age, the strong have trampled upon the weak; the crafty and heartless have ensnared and enslaved the simple and innocent, and nowhere, in all the annals of mankind, has any god succored the oppressed

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Strong, Simple, Heartless

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1874). “The Gods, and Other Lectures”, p.59

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• I am willing to admit that if the agriculturists are oppressed by peculiar burdens, they ought to be relieved from them, or be allowed a fair and just protection equivalent to all such peculiar burdens.

  Joseph Hume

  Peculiar, Protection, Burden

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• But this inestimable privilege was soon violated: with the knowledge of truth the emperor imbibed the maxims of persecution; and the sects which dissented from the catholic church were afflicted and oppressed by the triumph of Christianity. Constantine easily believed that the heretics, who presumed to dispute his opinions or to oppose his commands, were guilty of the most absurd and criminal obstinacy; and that a seasonable application of moderate severities might save those unhappy men from the danger of an everlasting condemnation.

  Edward Gibbon

  Men, History, Catholic

  Edward Gibbon (1837). “The history of the decline and fall of the Roman empire”, p.292

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• I am oppressed with a dread of living forever. That is the only disadvantage of vegetarianism.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Vegetarianism, Forever, Vegan Food

  "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

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