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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority.

When my ancestors came from Africa, they were shackled by our neck, our wrists, and our ankles in steel chains. I’ve turned those steel chains into gold to symbolize the fact that I’m still a slave, only my price tag is higher.

Life is not accumulation, it is about contribution.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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 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.

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

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself.

In some respects, South African apartheid was more vicious than Israeli practices, and in some respects the opposite is true.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

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

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.

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 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.

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

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

In order to have your voice be heard in Washington, you have to make some little contribution.

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.

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.

To the press alone, chequered as it is with abuses, the world is indebted for all the triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression.

Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people.

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

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.

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

Regimes planted by bayonets do not take root.

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.

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 attitude of the West and of Russia towards a crisis like Ukraine is diametrically different. The West is trying to establish the legality of any established border. For Russia, Ukraine is part of the Russian patrimony.

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.

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.