Poland is not East or West. Poland is at the center of European civilization. It has contributed mightily to that civilization. It is doing so today by being magnificently unreconciled to oppression.

The worst government is often the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.

There are so many men and women who hold no distinctive positions but whose contribution towards the development of society has been enormous.

He that overvalues himself will undervalue others, and he that undervalues others will oppress them.

I do not deny that I planned sabotage. I did not plan it in a spirit of recklessness nor because I have any love of violence. I planned it as a result of a calm and sober assessment of the political situation that had arisen after many years of tyranny, exploitation and oppression of my people by the whites.

If you see oppression of the poor, and justice and righteousness trampled in a country, do not be astounded.

We learned about gratitude and humility – that so many people had a hand in our success, from the teachers who inspired us to the janitors who kept our school clean… and we were taught to value everyone’s contribution and treat everyone with respect.

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.

The practice of politics in the East may be defined by one word: dissimulation.

In most cases, my visits to the West are for promotion of human values and religious harmony.

The oppression of any people for opinion’s sake has rarely had any other effect than to fix those opinions deeper, and render them more important.

From behind the Iron Curtain, there are signs that tyranny is in trouble and reminders that its structure is as brittle as its surface is hard.

Among those who dislike oppression are many who like to oppress.

All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.

Romania, which had the worst dictator in Eastern Europe, Ceausescu, he was a darling of the West. The United States and Britain loved him. He was supported until the last minute.

Tyrants seldom want pretexts.

The people who hold that our culture is an oppressive patriarchy, they don’t want to admit that the current hierarchy might be predicated on competence.

In a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority.

Could I have but a line a century hence crediting a contribution to the advance of peace, I would yield every honor which has been accorded by war.

Blacks, especially in America, have been raised with a slave mentality – they don’t feel that they have the right to speak as loud as possible.

Slavery takes hold of few, but many take hold of slavery.

The idea is to try to give all the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another.

If I have done the public any service, it is due to my patient thought.

Well, Art is Art, isn’t it? Still, on the other hand, water is water. And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now you tell me what you know.

I have seen how leaders rule by intimidation. Leaders who demonize and dehumanize entire groups of people often do so because they have nothing else to offer. And I have seen how places that stifle the voices and dismiss the potential of their citizens are diminished: how they are less vital, less hopeful, less free.

Black people comprehend the South. We understand its weight. It has rested on our backs… I knew that my heart would break if ever I put my foot down on that soil, moist, still, with old hurts. I had to face the fear/loathing at its source or it would consume me whole.

An oppressive government is more to be feared than a tiger.

My share of the work may be limited, but the fact that it is work makes it precious.

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.

Every person has a longing to be significant; to make a contribution; to be a part of something noble and purposeful.

We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.

I was lucky to be involved and get to contribute to something that was important, which is empowering people with software.

People crushed by laws, have no hope but to evade power. If the laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to the law; and those who have most to hope and nothing to lose will always be dangerous.

In too much of the West, everyone wants the guarantee of safety, and never having to make any decisions.

The names of Dingane and Bambata, Hintsa and Makana, Squngthi and Dalasile, Moshoeshoe and Sekhukhuni, were praised as the glory of the entire African nation. I hoped then that life might offer me the opportunity to serve my people and make my own humble contribution to their freedom struggle.

Peace can be contributed to by respect for our ability in defense.

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.

Nationalism has a way of oppressing others.

When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.

I have been influenced in my thinking by both west and east.

Poland should be strong and prosperous and independent and play its proper role as a great nation in the heart of Europe.

Some of these Ivy League kids want to have it both ways. They want to be baby members of the 1 percent, which they most certainly are, and yet still portray themselves as the oppressed.

The idea that women were oppressed throughout history is an appalling theory.

It is not my nature, when I see a people borne down by the weight of their shackles – the oppression of tyranny – to make their life more bitter by heaping upon them greater burdens; but rather would I do all in my power to raise the yoke than to add anything that would tend to crush them.

The world is indebted for all triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression.

I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.

The trouble with our people is as soon as they got out of slavery they didn’t want to give the white man nothing else. But the fact is, you got to give em something. Either your money, your land, your woman or your ass.

The totalitarian, to me, is the enemy – the one that’s absolute, the one that wants control over the inside of your head, not just your actions and your taxes.

If you will have a person enslaved, the first thing you must do is convince yourself that the person is subhuman. The second thing you have to do is convince your allies so you’ll have some help, and the third and probably unkindest cut of all is to convince that person that he or she is subhuman and deserves it.

For my part, I desire to see the time when education – and by its means, morality, sobriety, enterprise and industry – shall become much more general than at present, and should be gratified to have it in my power to contribute something to the advancement of any measure which might have a tendency to accelerate the happy period.

Any unarmed people are slaves, or are subject to slavery at any given moment.

If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.

No man, who continues to add something to the material, intellectual and moral well-being of the place in which he lives, is left long without proper reward.

The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.

I have so much in my life. I want to be of value to the world.

The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny.

I cannot with any real integrity perform songs I’ve done for 25 years. I don’t need the money. What I need is to feel that I am not letting myself down as an artist and that I still have something to contribute.

Life is not accumulation, it is about contribution.

The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world’s definitions.

You could tell ‚The Handmaid’s Tale‘ from a male point of view. People have mistakenly felt that the women are oppressed, but power tends to organise itself in a pyramid. I could pick a male narrator from somewhere in that pyramid. It would interesting.

My view of my role is that together with like-minded men and women, I could help contribute to a bipartisan view of American engagement in the world for another period; I could do my part to overcome this really, in a way, awful period in which we are turning history into personal recriminations, depriving our political system of a serious debate.