Oppression Quotes - Page 25

• hatred of oppression seems to me so blended with hatred of the oppressor that I cannot separate them. I feel that no other injury could be so hard to bear, so very very hard to forgive, as that inflicted by cruel oppression and prejudice.

  Charlotte Forten Grimke

  Racism, Hatred, Forgiving

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• In South America euphemism appears to be the grisly preserve of violent power. 'Liberty' was the name of the biggest prison in Uruguay under the military dictatorship, while in Chile one of the concentration camps was called 'Dignity.' It was the self-styled 'Peace and Justice' paramilitary group in Chiapas [Mexico] that in 1997 shot 45 peasants in the back, nearly all of them women and children, as they prayed in a church. What have the souls of the south done over the past few decades to deserve quite so much liberty and dignity and peace and justice?

  Isabel Fonseca

  Children, Military, Past

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• growth requires purposeful division. Responsible dissent is the essence of democracy.

  Abigail McCarthy

  Essence, Growth, Democracy

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• The United States, which has been called the home of the persecuted and the dispossessed, has been since its founding an asylum for emotional orphans. For over three hundred years, refugees from political oppression, religious persecution, famine, poverty, and a rigid class system which limited educational and economic opportunities have been leaving their native villages and cities and coming to the United States in search of freedom and a better life.

  Eileen Simpson

  Religious, Educational, Home

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• But whether the resistance against government tyrants is non-violent or physically violent, the effort to overthrow state oppression qualifies as true patriotism.

  Ron Paul

  Tyrants, Government, Effort

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• Anyone who thinks they stand apart from society and defies all which govern its existence has less in common with the lone wolf patriot standing up to dystopic forces of oppression - a myth - and more in common with the disease known as cancer - a harsh reality.

  Steven Weber

  Cancer, Reality, Thinking

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

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• Oppression makes a wise man mad.

  Frederick Douglass

  Wise, Men, Mad

  What to the Slave is the 4th of July?, delivered 4 July 1852

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• No more generations of our youth, here and all around the world, whose life is over, whose fate has been sealed, who have been condemned to an early death or a life of misery and brutality, whom the system has destined for oppression and oblivion even before they are born. I say no more of that.

  Bob Avakian

  Fate, Brutality, Generations

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• There are some groups that for years and years have not gotten the rights that the majority of human beings have, and I think that it's important to continue to draw these parallels so that when we think about our future we can change some of the lives of people who love differently than we do, look different than we do, who come from a different class. It's all about bringing awareness to how important it is to be accepting of people...and there will be oppression if one group thinks they're more important or superior.

  Janelle Monae

  Thinking, Rights, Years

  "Janelle Monáe on The Electric Lady and Bo Diddley". Interview with Eric Thurm, www.avclub.com. September 10, 2013.

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• Freedom is the very essence of life, the impelling force in all intellectual and social development, the creator of every new outlook for the future of mankind. The liberation of man from economic exploitation and from intellectual and political oppression, which finds its finest expression in the world-philosophy of Anarchism, is the first prerequisite for the evolution of a higher social culture and a new humanity.

  Rudolf Rocker

  Philosophy, Men, Expression

  Rudolf Rocker (2004). “Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice”, p.18, AK Press

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• Too often, systems of oppression turn those who are the targets of the oppression against one another.

  Tim Wise

  Target, Turns

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• You Can't Kill the Spirit resonates with the voices and power of women around the globe who have refused to be either passive or violent but instead act firmly and imaginatively to oppose oppression in its many guises. A wonderful tonic for activists and a treasure for those who teach, these stories bring women's history to life.

  Charlotte Bunch

  Voice, Stories, Treasure

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• Aside from the occasional genocide, oppression, evil and torture, etc., it is inarguable that public policy could be implemented more rapidly in an autocracy.

  David Harsanyi

  Evil, Etc, Genocide

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• There is no way to overstate the magnitude of the collective spiritual transformation that will occur when we shift from food of violent oppression to food of gentleness and compassion.

  Will Tuttle

  Spiritual, Compassion, Way

  Will Tuttle (2007). “The World Peace Diet: Eating for Spiritual Health and Social Harmony”, p.380, Lantern Books

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• Thus, cases of injustice, and oppression, and tyranny, and the most extravagant bigotry, are in constant occurrence among us every day. It is the custom to trumpet forth much wonder and astonishment at the chief actors therein setting at defiance so completely the opinion of the world; but there is no greater fallacy; it is precisely because they do consult the opinion of their own little world that such things take place at all, and strike the great world dumb with amazement.

  Charles Dickens

  Dumb, Words Of Wisdom, Injustice And Oppression

  Charles Dickens (2006). “Nicholas Nickleby: Easyread Edition”, p.2, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• Conventional opinions fit so comfortably into the dominant paradigm as to be seen not as opinions but as statements of fact, as 'the nature of things.' The very efficacy of opinion manipulation rests on the fact that we do not know we are being manipulated. The most insidious forms of oppression are those that so insinuate themselves into our communication universe and the recesses of our minds that we do not even realize they are acting upon us.

  Michael Parenti

  Communication, Political, Mind

  Michael Parenti (2011). “The Culture Struggle”, p.130, Seven Stories Press

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• Artists and celebrities are citizens, and as such you have a responsibility to keep fighting for justice because there are monolithic power structures and systemic oppression out there.

  Emily Saliers

  Responsibility, Fighting, Artist

  "An Interview with the Indigo Girls’ Emily Saliers". Interview with Marissa Moss, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 1, 2009.

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• We need to stop playing Privilege or Oppression Olympics because we'll never get anywhere until we find more effective ways of talking through difference. We should be able to say, “This is my truth,” and have that truth stand without a hundred clamoring voices shouting, giving the impression that multiple truths cannot coexist.

  Roxane Gay

  Talking, Voice, Differences

  "Peculiar benefits" by Roxane Gay, therumpus.net. May 16, 2012.

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• From my membership in all of these groups I have learned that oppression and the intolerance of difference come in all shapes and sizes and colors and sexualities; and that among those of us who share the goals of liberation and a workable future for our children, there can be no hierarchies of oppression.

  Audre Lorde

  Children, Color, Differences

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• Whatever oppressions man has suffered, they have invariably fallen more heavily on woman. Whatever new liberties advancing civilization has brought to man, ever the smallest measure has been accorded to woman, as a result of church teaching. The effect of this is seen in every department of life.

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton

  Teaching, Men, Civilization

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• Our [Virginia's] act for freedom of religion is extremely applauded. The Ambassadors and ministers of the several nations of Europe resident at this court have asked me copies of it to send to their sovereigns, and it is inserted at full length in several books now in the press; among others, in the new Encyclopédie. I think it will produce considerable good even in those countries where ignorance, superstition, poverty and oppression of body and mind in every form, are so firmly settled on the mass of the people, that their redemption from them can never be hoped.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Country, Book, Ignorance

  Thomas Jefferson (1830). “Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies, from the Papers of Thomas Jefferson”, p.44

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• I told my cellmates about the oppression of the whites and apartheid. I helped organize hunger strikes and the like in my prison.

  Nelson Mandela

  Hunger Strike, Prison, Strikes

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• You ask what I have found and far and wide I go,
  Nothing but Cromwell's house and Cromwell's murderous crew,
  The lovers and the dancers are beaten into the clay,
  And the tall men and the swordsmen and the horsemen where are they?

  William Butler Yeats

  Men, House, Dancer

  William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.311, Simon and Schuster

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• The Greeks by their laws, and the Romans by the spirit of their people, took care to put into the hands of their rulers no such engine of oppression as a standing army. Their system was to make every man a soldier, and oblige him to repair to the standard of his country whenever that was reared. This made them invincible; and the same remedy will make us so.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Death, Country, Military

  Thomas Jefferson, Joyce Appleby, Terence Ball (1999). “Jefferson: Political Writings”, p.139, Cambridge University Press

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• In every cry of every man,
  In every infant's cry of fear,
  In every voice, in every ban,
  The mind-forg'd manacles I hear.

  William Blake

  Men, Voice, Mind

  William Blake, Andrew Lincoln (1991). “Songs of Innocence and of Experience”, p.193, Princeton University Press

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