Oppression Quotes - Page 28

• The whole evolution of present-day society tends to develop the various forms of bureaucratic oppression and to give them a sort of autonomy in regard to capitalism as such.

  Simone Weil

  Giving, Evolution, Form

  Simone Weil (2013). “Oppression and Liberty”, p.13, Routledge

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• What is surprising is not that oppression should make its appearance only after higher forms of economy have been reached, but that it should always accompany them.

  Simone Weil

  Appearance, Economics, Economy

  Simone Weil (2013). “Oppression and Liberty”, p.59, Routledge

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• But it is not really difference the oppressor fears so much as similarity.

  Cherrie Moraga

  Differences, Similarity, Oppressors

  Cherríe Moraga (1983). “Loving in the war years: lo que nunca pasó por sus labios”, South End Pr

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• If you have to be careful because of oppression and censorship, this pressure produces diamonds.

  Tatyana Tolstaya

  Adversity, Pressure, Censorship

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• toleration of exploitation, oppression, and injustice points to a condition lying like a pall over the whole of society; it is apathy, an unconcern that is incapable of suffering.

  Dorothee Solle

  Lying, Suffering, Apathy

  Dorothee Sölle (1975). “Suffering”, Fortress Press

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• As a Black lesbian feminist comfortable with the many different ingredients of my identity, and a woman committed to racial and sexual freedom from oppression, I find I am constantly being encouraged to pluck out some one aspect of myself and present this as the meaningful whole, eclipsing or denying the other parts of self. But this is a destructive and fragmenting way to live.

  Audre Lorde

  Meaningful, Acceptance, Self

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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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• Horizontal hostility may be expressed in sibling rivalry or in competitive dueling which wrecks not only office tranquility or suburban domesticity but also some radical political groups and, it must be sadly said, some women's liberation groups. ... [it is] misdirected anger that rightly should be focused on the external causes of oppression.

  Florynce Kennedy

  Sibling, Office, Political

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• Learning is not virtue but the means to bring us an acquaintance with it. Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful. Let these be your motives to action through life, the relief of the distressed, the detection of frauds, the defeat of oppression, and diffusion of happiness.

  Nathanael Greene

  Integrity, Mean, Relief

  Nathanael Greene, Richard K. Showman, Rhode Island Historical Society (2005). “The papers of General Nathanael Greene”

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• Minorities have never been given their rights. They have always had to wage a political and legal battle to win them.

  Gloria Allred

  Winning, Rights, Political

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• Within the new self-help books for women, patriarachy and male domination are rarely identified as forces that lead to the oppression, exploitation, and domination of women. Instead, these books suggest that individual relationships between men and women can be changed solely by women making the right choices.

  Bell Hooks

  Book, Men, Self

  bell hooks (2014). “Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black”, p.45, Routledge

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• Intellectual neutrality is not possible in a historical world of exploitation and oppression.

  Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza

  Historical, Intellectual, Neutrality

  Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza (2009). “Democratizing Biblical Studies: Toward an Emancipatory Educational Space”, p.14, Westminster John Knox Press

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• They say that oppression engenders hate. They are heard on all sides crying hate hate.

  Monique Wittig

  Hate, Sides, Cry

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• It is oppression that creates sex and not the contrary. The contrary would be to say that sex creates oppression, or to say that the cause (origin) of oppression is to be found in sex itself, in a natural division of the sexes preexisting (or outside of) society.

  Monique Wittig

  Sex, Causes, Would Be

  Monique Wittig (1992). “The Straight Mind: And Other Essays”, Beacon Press (MA)

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• So, all of us would do well to stop fighting each other for our space at the bottom, because there ain't no more room.

  Cheryl Clarke

  Fighting, Space, Rooms

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• Black Revolutionaries do not drop from the moon. We are created by our conditions. We are shaped by our oppression. We are being manufactured in droves in the ghetto streets, places like attica, san quetin, bedford hills, leavenworth, and sing sing. They are turning out thousands of us.

  Assata Shakur

  Ghetto, Moon, Black

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• While there may not be spiritual oppression involved in your battle [against lust], there'll always be opposition. The enemy is constantly near your ear. He doesn't want you to win this fight, and he knows the lies that so often break a man's confidence and his will to win. Expect to hear lies and plenty of them. satan's lie: 'You're the only one dealing with this problem. If anyone ever finds out, you'll be the laughingstock of the church!' The truth: Most men deal with this problem, so no one will laugh.

  Steve Arterburn

  Spiritual, Lying, Fighting

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• Racial oppression of black people in America has done what neither class oppression or sexual oppression, with all their perniciousness, has ever done: destroyed an entire people and their culture.

  Eleanor Holmes Norton

  Class, America, Racism

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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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• The antagonism between nationalities will lose all its acuteness on the day when neither the iniquitous tendency to oppression and domination, nor the perpetual danger of the threatening preparations for war will exist. ("L'antagonisme entre les nationalités perdra toute son acuité le jour où n'existera plus la tendance inique à l'oppression et à la domination, ni le perpétuel danger des menaçants préparatifs de guerre. », Fr. ")

  African Spir

  War, Son, Preparation

  "Paroles d'un sage: Choix de pensées d'African Spir" ("Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir") by Hélène Claparède-Spir, (p. 54), 1937.

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• The right to ridicule is far more important to society than any right not to be ridiculed because one in my view represents openness - and the other represents oppression.

  Rowan Atkinson

  Views, Important, Ridicule

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• The religions whose theology is least preoccupied with events in time and most concerned with eternity, have been consistently less violent and more humane in political practice. Unlike early Judaism, Christianity and Mohammedanism (all obsessed with time) Hinduism and Buddhism have never been persecuting faiths, have preached almost no holy wars and have refrained from that proselytizing religious imperialism which has gone hand in hand with political and economic oppression of colored people.

  Aldous Huxley

  Religious, War, Buddhism

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• 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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