Oppression Quotes - Page 16

• Growth is the surviving influence in all our lives. The tree will send up its trunk in thick profusion from land burned black by atom bombs. Children will grow from poverty and filth and oppression and develop honor, integrity, contribute to all mankind.

  Chester Himes

  Children, Integrity, Land

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• The fact that 'Scrubs' is so popular in Israel is very important to me. I feel like I'm helping to cancel out the thousands of years of oppression the Jewish people have suffered.

  Zach Braff

  Israel, Years, People

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• Communities tend to be guided less than individuals by conscience and a sense of responsibility. How much misery does this fact cause mankind! It is the source of wars and every kind of oppression, which fill the earth with pain, sighs and bitterness.

  Albert Einstein

  Pain, War, Responsibility

  Albert Einstein (1954). “Ideas and opinions”, Wings

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• In fact, if law were restricted to protecting all persons, all liberties, and all properties; if law were nothing more than the organized combination of the individual's right to self-defense; if law were the obstacle, the check, the punisher of all oppression and plunder - is it likely that we citizens would then argue much about the extent of the franchise?

  Frederic Bastiat

  Self, Law, Liberty

  Frederic Bastiat (2006). “The Law”, p.14, Filiquarian Publishing, LLC.

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• A people who free themselves from foreign domination will be free culturally only if,
  without complexes and without underestimating the importance of positive accretions from
  oppressor and other cultures, they return to the upward paths of their own culture, which is
  nourished by the living reality of its environment, and which negates both harmful influences
  and any kind of subjection to foreign culture. Thus, it may be seen that if imperialist
  domination has the vital need to practice cultural oppression, national liberation is necessarily
  an act of culture

  Amilcar Cabral

  Reality, Other Cultures, Practice

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• ...the great movement of apostasy being organized in every country for the establishment of a One-World Church which shall have neither dogmas, nor hierarchy, neither discipline for the mind, nor curb for the passions, and which, under the pretext of freedom and human dignity, would bring back to the world (if such a Church could overcome) the reign of legalized cunning and force, and the oppression of the weak, and of all those who toil and suffer. [...] Indeed, the true friends of the people are neither revolutionaries, nor innovators: they are traditionalists.

  Pope Pius X

  Country, Powerful, True Friend

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• Knowledge and liberty are so prevalent in this country, that I do not believe that the United States would ever be disposed to establish one religious sect, and lay all others under legal disabilities. But as we know not what may take place hereafter, and any such test would be exceedingly injurious to the rights of free citizens, I cannot think it altogether superfluous to have added a clause, which secures us from the possibility of such oppression.

  Oliver Wolcott

  Country, Religious, Father

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• Jesus himself, and most of the message of the Gospels, is a message of service to the poor, a critique of the rich and the powerful, and a pacifist doctrine. And it remained that way, that's what Christianity was up... until Constantine. :Constantine shifted it so the cross, which was the symbol of persecution of somebody working for the poor, was put on the shield of the Roman Empire. It became the symbol for violence and oppression, and that's pretty much what the church has been until the present.

  Noam Chomsky

  Jesus, Powerful, Church

  "Science in the Dock". Science & Theology News Interview, chomsky.info. March 1, 2006.

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• Some people are so worn down by the yoke of oppression that they give up.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Inspirational, Giving Up, People

  Martin Luther King (Jr.), Alex Ayres (1993). “The Wisdom of Martin Luther King, Jr”, Plume

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• A second way that oppressed people sometimes deal with oppression is to resort to physical violence and corroding hatred.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Inspirational, People, Hatred

  Martin Luther King (Jr.) (1964). “A Martin Luther King Treasury”

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• For the Order wishes to be secret and to work in silence; for thus it is better secured from the oppression of the ruling powers, and because this secrecy gives a greater zest to the whole.

  Adam Weishaupt

  Zest, Order, Giving

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• Most of the harm in the world is done by good people, and not by accident, lapse, or omission. It is the result of their deliberate actions, long persevered in, which they hold to be motivated by high ideals toward virtuous ends... ...when millions are slaughtered, when torture is practiced, starvation enforced, oppression made a policy, as at present over a large part of the world, and as it has often been in the past, it must be at the behest of very many good people, and even by their direct action, for what they consider a worthy object.

  Isabel Paterson

  Past, Direct Action, Omission

  Isabel Paterson (1993). “God of the Machine”, p.235, Transaction Publishers

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• Secession, like any other REVOLUTIONARY ACT, may be morally justified by the extremity of oppression; but to call it a constitutional right is confounding the meaning of terms.

  Andrew Jackson

  War, May, Revolutionary

  Andrew Jackson (1835). “Annual messages, veto messages, protest, &c. of Andrew Jackson, President of the United States”, p.113

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• The British government had not engaged in any serious actual oppression of the colonies before 1774, but it had claimed powers not granted by the governed, powers that made oppression possible, powers that it began to exercise in 1774 in response to colonial denial of them. The Revolution came about not to overthrow tyranny, but to prevent it.

  Edmund Morgan

  Exercise, Government, History

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• Anti-Semitism is nothing but the antagonistic attitude produced in the non-Jew by the Jewish group. This is a normal social reaction. The Jewish group has thrived on oppression and on the antagonism it has forever met in the world... the root cause is their use of enemies they create in order to keep solidarity.

  Albert Einstein

  Attitude, Order, Roots

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• People get used to anything. The less you think about your oppression, the more your tolerance for it grows.

  Assata Shakur

  Thinking, People, Tolerance

  Assata Shakur (1987). “Assata: An Autobiography”, p.277, Zed Books

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