Oppression Quotes - Page 20

• Half the Sky:  Turning oppression into opportunity for women worldwide

  Gary Haugen

  Opportunity, Sky, Half

  Gary A. Haugen, Victor Boutros (2015). “The Locust Effect: Why the End of Poverty Requires the End of Violence”, p.295, Oxford University Press

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• In bringing the subject of religious oppression to a wider audience, I didn't just want to kick the Catholic Church but to poke a finger in the throat of theocracy and to let it be known that people shouldn't tolerate this anymore.

  Peter Mullan

  Religious, People, Catholic

  21 Copy quote

• It is the worst oppression, that is done by colour of justice

  Edward Coke

  Justice, Done, Worst

  Edward Coke (1817). “The Second Part of the Institutes of the Laws of England Containing the Exposition of Many Ancient and Other Statutes”, p.48, The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have lived my life, and I have fought my battles, not against the weak and the poor - anybody can do that - but against power, against injustice, against oppression, and I have asked no odds from them, and I never shall.

  Clarence Darrow

  Odds, Law, Battle

  Clarence Darrow (2012). “Attorney for the Damned: Clarence Darrow in the Courtroom”, p.497, University of Chicago Press

  79 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  8 Copy quote

• Political scientists almost everywhere have promoted the expansion of government power. They have functioned as the clergy of oppression.

  Rudolph Rummel

  Government, Political, Having Fun

  "Rudolph Rummel Talks About the Miracle of Liberty and Peace". The Freeman Interview, fee.org. July 1, 1997.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The ruthless economic exploitation and political oppression of the peasants by the landlord class forced them into numerous uprisings against its rule.... It was the class struggles of the peasants, the peasant uprisings and peasant wars that constituted the real motive force of historical development in Chinese feudal society.

  Mao Zedong

  Real, War, Struggle

  Mao Zedong (2017). “Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (The Little Red Book) & Other Works”, p.11, Lulu.com

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is not conclusive proof of a doctrine's correctness that its adversaries use the police, the hangman, and violent mobs to fight it. But it is a proof of the fact that those taking recourse to violent oppression are in their subconscious convinced of the untenability of their own doctrines.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Fighting, Police, Doctrine

  9 Copy quote

• It [freedom] is a thing of the spirit. Men must be free to worship, to think, to hold opinions, to speak without fear. They must be free to challenge wrong and oppression with the surety of justice.

  Herbert Hoover

  Men, Thinking, Justice

  8 Copy quote

• Oppressed people are treacherous for the simple reason that treachery is both a means of survival and a way to curry favor with one's oppressor.

  Florence King

  Mean, Simple, People

  Florence King (1993). “Southern Ladies & Gentlemen”, p.155, Macmillan

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• To answer oppression with appropriate resistance requires knowledge of two kinds: in the first place, self-knowledge by the victim, which means awareness that oppression exists, an awareness that the victim has fallen from a great height of glory or promise into the present depths; secondly, the victim must know who the enemy is. He must know his oppressor's real name, not an alias, a pseudonym, or a nom de plume!

  Chinua Achebe

  Real, Mean, Names

  Chinua Achebe (2011). “The Education of a British-Protected Child”, p.67, Penguin UK

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• Strikes and boycotting are akin to war, and can be justified only on grounds analogous to those which justify war, viz., intolerable injustice and oppression.

  Rutherford B. Hayes

  War, Injustice And Oppression, Justified

  "Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes". Book by Rutherford B. Hayes, 1922 - 1926.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The artivist (artist +activist) uses her artistic talents to fight and struggle against injustice and oppression – by any medium necessary. The artivist merges commitment to freedom and justice with the pen, the lens, the brush, the voice, the body, and the imagination. The artivist knows that to make an observation is to have an obligation.

  M. K. Asante

  Struggle, Commitment, Fighting

  56 Copy quote

• The hell of human suffering, evil and oppression is paved with good intentions. The men who have most injured and oppressed humanity, who have most deeply sinned against it, were according to their standards and their conscience good men; what was bad in them, what wrought moral evil and cruelty, treason to truth and progress, was not at all in their intentions, in their purpose, in their personal character, but in their opinions.

  Robert Briffault

  Character, Men, Evil

  4 Copy quote

• What can still that hunger of the heart which sickens the eye for beauty, and makes sweet-scented ease an oppression?

  George Eliot

  Beauty, Sweet, Heart

  George Eliot (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated)”, p.3376, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Oppression makes a poor country.

  William Penn

  Country, Poor, Poor Countries

  William Penn (1778). “Fruits of Solitude. ... Eighth edition”, p.75

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• I do feel visceral revulsion at the burka because for me it is a symbol of the oppression of women.

  Richard Dawkins

  Revulsion, Visceral, Feels

  "Fury Over Richard Dawkins's Burka Jibe as Atheist Tells of His 'visceral Revulsion' at Muslim Dress". www.dailymail.co.uk. August 10, 2010.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• I may boldly speak In right, though proud oppression will not hear me!

  Thomas Otway

  May, Proud, Speak

  1682 Venice Preserved, or a Plot Discovered, act1, sc.1.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• I also believe that US backing for Israeli policies of expansion of the Israeli state and oppression of the Palestinian people is the major cause of bitter division and violence in the world.

  Clare Short

  Believe, People, Division

  4 Copy quote