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.

We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.

Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.

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

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

Left ear, I wear four earrings. The four is symbolic of the four seasons, spring, winter, summer and fall, the four directions, north, east, south and west, the four gospel writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people.

Discrimination is a hellhound that gnaws at Negroes in every waking moment of their lives to remind them that the lie of their inferiority is accepted as truth in the society dominating them.

The former colonies, in Latin America in particular, have a better chance than ever before to overcome centuries of subjugation, violence and foreign intervention, which they have so far survived as dependencies with islands of luxury in a sea of misery.

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.

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.

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

Nationalism has a way of oppressing others.

Tyrants seldom want pretexts.

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.

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.

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The walls, the bars, the guns and the guards can never encircle or hold down the idea of the people.

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

Living in a state of terror was new to many white people in America, but black people have been living in a state of terror in this country for more than 400 years.

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

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

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

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

Part of the core information that I’ve been purveying is that identity politics is a sick game. You don’t play racial, ethnic, and gender identity games. The Left plays them on behalf of the oppressed, let’s say, and the Right tends to play them on behalf of nationalism and ethnic pride. I think they’re equally dangerous.

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.

Germany is a great nation only because its people have so much Polish blood in their veins.

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.

Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

I don’t want to have lived in vain like most people. I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people, even those I’ve never met. I want to go on living even after my death!

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.

For more than four decades, the Libyan people have been ruled by a tyrant – Moammar Gaddafi. He has denied his people freedom, exploited their wealth, murdered opponents at home and abroad, and terrorized innocent people around the world – including Americans who were killed by Libyan agents.

The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

I grew up in the South under segregation. So, I know what terrorism feels like – when your father could be taken out in the middle of the night and lynched just because he didn’t look like he was in an obeying frame of mind when a white person said something he must do. I mean, that’s terrorism, too.

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

Putin goes to bed at night knowing he can break all the rules, and the West will follow all the rules.

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

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.

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

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

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.

One strength of the communist system of the East is that it has some of the character of a religion and inspires the emotions of a religion.

Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever.

Tolerance implies no lack of commitment to one’s own beliefs. Rather it condemns the oppression or persecution of others.

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

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.

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.

She would have thrived as a grandmother. I know how much she would have contributed to their lives, and I am sad they will miss out on that.