oppression quotes

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

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

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

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.

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.

Nationalism has a way of oppressing others.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Regimes planted by bayonets do not take root.

Mubarak was oppressing and pillaging his own people. He was an enemy to the Palestinians and an accomplice of Israel, the sixth nuclear power on the planet, associated with the war-mongering NATO group.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Tyrants seldom want pretexts.

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

The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.