Oppression Quotes - Page 12

• What we call soul has been around a long time. It comes out of a particular culture that is African in origin, but influenced by 250 years of slavery, as well as other forms of racial oppression.

  Roy Ayers

  Years, Long, Soul

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• Oppression is the essence of power.

  Ernst Kaltenbrunner

  Essence

  Said to Heinrich Himmler. "The Rand McNally Encyclopedia of World War II". Book by John Keegan, p. 137, 1977.

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• Iranian women are very consciously aware of gender-explicit oppression. Therefore: with so much more at stake, Iranian women have each other's back: on the street, in stores, at celebrations, everywhere.

  Inga Muscio

  Celebration, Gender, Stores

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• In a world full of war, famine, oppression, deceit, monotony, what—apart from the eternal innocence of animals—offers an image of hope? A mother with a newborn child in her arms? The child may end up as a murderer or a murder victim, so that the hopeful image is a prefiguration of a pietà: a mother with her newly dead child on her lap.

  Harry Mulisch

  Mother, Children, War

  Harry Mulisch, Paul Vincent (1997). “The Discovery of Heaven”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

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• Already the writers are complaining that there is too much freedom. They need some pressure. The worse your daily life, the better your art. If you have to be careful because of oppression and censorship, this pressure produces diamonds.

  Tatyana Tolstaya

  Art, Complaining, Needs

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• Do everything possible so that liberty is victorious over oppression, justice over injustice, love over hate.

  Ignacio Ellacuria

  Hate, Justice, Liberty

  Jon Sobrino (S.I.), Ignacio Ellacuría (1990). “Companions of Jesus: The Jesuit Martyrs of El Salvador”

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• It won't ruin our movement if someone gets killed in an animal rights action. It's going to happen sooner or later. The Animal Liberation Front, the Earth Liberation Front - sooner or later there's going to be someone getting hurt. And we have to accept that fact. It's going to happen. It's not going to hurt our movement. Our movement will go on. And it's important that we not let the bully pulpit of the FBI and the other oppression agencies stop us from what we're doing. They are the violent ones. They are the terrorists ... we have to keep doing what we're doing.

  Jerry Vlasak

  Hurt, Animal, Agency

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• I think violence is part of the struggle against oppression. If something bad happens to these people [animal researchers], it will discourage others. It is inevitable that violence will be used in the struggle and that it will be effective.

  Jerry Vlasak

  Struggle, Animal, Thinking

  "Kill scientists, says animal rights chief" by Jamie Doward, www.theguardian.com. July 25, 2004.

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• An Irishman I am, begora! With a heart and a spirit on
  me not crushed be a hundred years of oppression. I'll be getting me
  shillelagh out next, wait'll you see.

  Martin McDonagh

  Heart, Years, Waiting

  Martin McDonagh (2013). “The Cripple Of Inishmaan”, p.63, A&C Black

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• Just as the children of Israel were directed by God to depart from the land of their oppression with its tyrannical monarch, cross a great sea, and establish a new nation, so, too, the children of Great Britain were led by God to leave the land of their religious oppression, cross a great ocean, inhabit a promised land, and, eventually, resist a "tyrannical" George III and create a new nation in "God's American Israel."

  Daniel L Dreisbach

  Religious, Children, Ocean

  Source: www.biblegateway.com

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• It is my belief that in our mad world where there is so much pain, rivalry, hatred, violence, inequality, and oppression, it is people who are weak, rejected, marginalized, counted as useless, who can become a source of life and of salvation for us as individuals as well as for our world. And it is my hope that each one of you may experience the incredible gift of the friendship of people who are poor and weak, that you too, may receive life from them. For they call us to love, to communion, to compassion and to community.

  Jean Vanier

  Pain, Compassion, Our World

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• I don't think [governments] use [religious repression ] as a weapon, they use it as a as a means of - of oppression. To stifle opposition. To mute resistance.

  Elie Wiesel

  Religious, Mean, Thinking

  Source: www.savetibet.org

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• The history of an oppressed people is hidden in the lies and the agreed myth of its conquerors.

  Meridel Le Sueur

  Lying, People, Myth

  Meridel Le Sueur, Elaine Hedges (1990). “Ripening: Selected Work”, p.66, Feminist Press at CUNY

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• McEwan's Atonement…truly dazzles, proving to be as much about the art and morality of writing as it is about the past…. The middle section of Atonement, the two vividly realized set pieces of Robbie's trek to the Channel and Briony's experiences with the wounded evacuees of Dunkirk, would alone have made an outstanding novel…. There is wonderful writing throughout as McEwan weaves his many themes — the accidents of contingency, the sins of absent fathers, class oppression — into his narrative, and in a magical love scene.

  Noah Richler

  Art, Father, Writing

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• Contemplation is a very dangerous activity. It not only brings us face to face with God. It brings us, as well, face to face with the world, face to face with the self. And then, of course, something must be done. Nothing stays the same once we have found the God within…. We carry the world in our hearts: the oppression of all peoples, the suffering of our friends, the burdens of our enemies, the raping of the Earth, the hunger of the starving, the joy of every laughing child.

  Joan D. Chittister

  Children, Heart, Self

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• The serious work for feminism in the 21st century is across the globe. Instead of retreating into "safe spaces" and focusing on their own imagined oppression, today's feminists should be reaching out to women's groups in the developing world.

  Christina Hoff Sommers

  Space, Feminist, Feminism

  "Is Modern Academic Feminism Harming Women?". Interview with Clay Routledge, www.psychologytoday.com. September 4, 2016.

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• Those who have to face persistent political persecution become highly politicized. Our lives take on a rhythm different from those who, on waking up in the morning, do not need to wonder who might have been arrested during the night and what further acts of blatant injustice might be committed against our people later during the day. Our antennae become highly sensitive to vibrations barely noticed by those whose everyday existence is removed from political struggle.

  Aung San Suu Kyi

  Morning, Struggle, Night

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• The ever-present impulse is to push against restriction and, in so doing, to feel intolerably hemmed in. Thus in practice, every liberation increases the sense of oppression. Nor is the paradox merely in the mind: the laws enacted to secure the rights of every person and group, by creating protective boundaries, create new barriers.

  Jacques Barzun

  Rights, Law, Practice

  "The Culture We Deserve" by Jacques Barzun, Wesleyan University Press, (p. 97), 1989.

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• Every new Fashion is a refusal to inherit, a subversion against the oppression of the preceding Fashion; Fashion experiences itself as a Right, the natural right of the present over the past.

  Roland Barthes

  Fashion, Past, Natural

  Roland Barthes (1983). “Systeme de la Mode”, p.112, Univ of California Press

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• How pitiable is it to reflect, that although you were so fully convinced of the benevolence of the Father of Mankind, and of his equal and impartial distribution of these rights and privileges, which he hath conferred upon them, that you should at the same time counteract his mercies, in detaining by fraud and violence so numerous a part of my brethren, under groaning captivity and cruel oppression, that you should at the same time be found guilty of that most criminal act, which you professedly detested in others, with respect to yourselves

  Benjamin Banneker

  Father, Rights, Criminals

  Letter to Thomas Jefferson on slavery, August 19, 1791.

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• Perhaps a revolution can overthrow autocratic despotism and profiteering or power-grabbing oppression, but it can never truly reform a manner of thinking; instead, new prejudices, just like the old ones they replace, will serve as a leash for the great unthinking mass.

  Immanuel Kant

  Thinking, Revolution, Reform

  Immanuel Kant (1983). “Perpetual Peace and Other Essays: on Politics, History, and Morals”, p.42, Hackett Publishing

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• The object of a dialogical-liberterian action is not to 'dislodge' the oppressed from a mythological reality in order to 'bind' them to another reality. On the contrary, the object of dialogical action is to make it possible for the oppressed, by perceiving their adhesion, to opt to transform an unjust reality." "In order for the oppressed to unite they must first cut the umbilical cord of magic and myth which binds them to the world of oppression; the unity which links them to each other must be of a different nature.

  Paulo Freire

  Cutting, Reality, Order

  "Pedagogy of the Oppressed". Book by Paulo Freire, Chapter 4, Unity for Liberation, 1968.

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• Dignity, in private men and in governments, has been little else than a stately and stiff perseverance in oppression; and spirit, as it is called, little else than the foam of hard-mouthed insolence.

  Walter Savage Landor

  Perseverance, Men, Littles

  Walter Savage Landor (1824). “Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen”

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• The idea that the object of constitutions is not to confirm the predominance of any interest, but to prevent it; to preserve with equal care the independence of labour and the security of property; to make the rich safe against envy, and the poor against oppression, marks the highest level attained by the statesmanship of Greece.

  Lord Acton

  Ideas, Envy, Independence

  John Emerich Edward Dalberg, Lord Acton (2016). “The History of Freedom (and other Essays)”, p.35, Jazzybee Verlag

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• Reason ... contradicts the established order of men and things on behalf of existing societal forces that reveal the irrational character of this order for "rational" is a mode of thought and action which is geared to reduce ignorance, destruction, brutality, and oppression.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Ignorance, Character, Men

  Herbert Marcuse (2012). “One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society”, p.142, Beacon Press

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