oppression Quotes

“Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The urge for freedom will eventually come. This is what has happened to the American Negro. Something within has reminded him of his birthright of freedom; something without has reminded him that he can gain it.”

“Us colored folks is too envious of one ‘nother. Dat’s how come us don’t git o further than us do. Us talks about de white man keepin’ us down! Shucks! He don’t have tuh. Us keeps our own selves down.”

“The people do not wish to be ruled nor oppressed by the nobles, and the nobles wish to rule and oppress the people.”

“You can satisfy the people, for their object is more righteous than that of the nobles, the latter wishing to oppress, while the former only desire not to be oppressed.”

“Have you any idea how much tyrants fear the people they oppress? All of them realize that, one day, amongst their many victims, there is sure to be one that rises against them and strikes back!”

Death may beget life, but oppression can beget nothing other than itself.

“One who becomes a prince through the favour of the people ought to keep them friendly, and this he can easily do seeing they only ask not to be oppressed by him.”

“Emotional energy has got to go somewhere, and self-loathing is a powerful emotion. Turned inwards, it becomes our personal hells: addiction, obsession, compulsion, depression, violent relationships, illness. Projected outward it becomes our collective hells: violence, war, crime, oppression. But it’s all the same thing. Hell has many mansions too.”

″...for each of us who wants to live in happiness and give happiness, there’s another different sort of person wanting to take it away...”

“In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.”

“I feel like they done put me on death row, too. What do we tell these children about how to stay out of harm’s way when you can be at your own house, minding your own business, surrounded by your entire family, and they still put some murder on you that you ain’t do and send you to death row?”

“Oh Enkidu, arise, I will conduct thee unto Eanna dwelling place of Anu, where Gilgamish [oppresses] the souls of men.”

“I’d prefer a world with no identity politics. I’d prefer we judged people according to reason, logic and evidence instead of barmy left-wing theories about ‘oppression.’ ”

“Many of these leaders, however (perhaps due to the natural and understandable biases against pedagogy) have ended up using the ‘educational’ methods employed by the oppressor. They deny pedagogical action in the liberation process, but they use propaganda to convince.”

“True generosity lies in striving so that these hands – whether of individuals or entire peoples – need be extended less and less in supplication, so that more and more they become human hands which work and, working, transform the world. This lesson and this apprenticeship must come, however, from the oppressed themselves and from those who are truly solidary with them.”

“The oppressed must not, in seeking to regain their humanity… become in turn oppressors of the oppressors, but rather restorers in the humanity of both.”

“Self-deprecation is another characteristic of the oppressed, which derives from their internalization of the opinion of the oppressors hold of them. So often do they hear that they are good for nothing, know nothing and are incapable of learning anything – that they are sick, lazy, and unproductive – that in the end they become convinced of their own unfitness.”

“The more alienated people are, the easier it is to divide them and keep them divided… These focalized forms of action, by intensifying the focalized way of life of the oppressed (especially in rural areas), hamper the oppressed from perceiving reality and keep them isolated from the problems of oppressed men and women in rural areas.”

“Leaders who do not act dialogically, but insist on imposing their decisions, do not organize the people–they manipulate them. They do not liberate, nor are they liberated: they oppress.”

“You can’t be nobody but who you are, Cory. That shadow wasn’t nothing but you growing into yourself. You either got to grow into it or cut it down to fit you. But that’s all you got to make a life with. That’s all you got to measure yourself against the world out there.”

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”

“The idea used to be that terrible countries were terrible because good, decent, innocent people were being oppressed by evil, thuggish leaders. Somalia changed that. Here you have a country where just about everybody is caught up in hatred and fighting.”

“The crown and comfort of my life, your favour, I do give lost; for I do feel it gone, But know not how it went. My second joy And first-fruits of my body, from his presence I am barr’d, like one infectious.”

“The regime of oppression is almost over; its life force is waning, and only its ghost remains. Don’t tarry too long to mourn its effects; celebrate and rejoice in the new. The past is over. Wipe the dirt off your feet.”

“The old silence had broken and left us with the sharp pieces. ”

“The lack of confidence of the African-American in himself and in his possibilities is what has kept him down. His mis-education has been a perfect success in this respect.”

“The oppressor has always indoctrinated the weak with his interpretation of the crimes of the strong.”

“Simply put, feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression.”

“Simply put, feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression. This was a definition of feminism I offered in Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center more than 10 years ago. It was my hope at the time that it would become a common definition everyone would use. I liked this definition because it did not imply that men were the enemy.”

“The oppressed will always believe the worst about themselves.”

‘Dragons!’ said the Ordinary Princess. ‘I’ll give them dragons. So they think they can push me off on to any silly prince who kills a dragon, do they!’ And she stamped her foot and stuck out her tongue at the palace walls just to relieve her feelings. ‘Well, you just wait and see!’ she said.”

″‘Well, Your Majesty knows what romantic minds these young princes have, so suppose we hired a dragon to—to lay waste the countryside—?’ (Here the Minister of Public Safety looked alarmed and the Minister for Agriculture and Fishery was heard to protest.) ‘We might then imprison Her Royal Highness in a tower and send out a proclamation to say that any prince who slew the dragon should be rewarded by the princess’s hand in marriage.‘”

“It all came flooding back to him now—swaying and humming along with the prayers, craning his neck to see the Torah when it was taken out of the ark and hoping to get a chance to touch it and then kiss his fingers as the scroll came around in a procession. Josef felt his skin tingle. The Nazis had taken all this from them, from him, and now he and the passengers on the ship were taking it back.”

“Only those who have watched and guided the faltering feet, the misty minds, the dull understands, of the dark pupils of these schools know how faithfully, how piteously, this people strove to learn.”

“The two main criminals are France and the United States. They owe Haiti enormous reparations because of actions going back hundreds of years. If we could ever get to the stage where somebody could say, ‘We’re sorry we did it,’ that would be nice.”

“All human authority, however organized, must have confined limits, or insolence and oppression will prove the offspring of its grandeur, and the difficulty or rather impossibility of escape prevents resistance.”

“Father, deliver us from the oppression of the ungodly in high places. Have mercy on our nation for the abominations in the land.”

″...the sovereign has only three duties to attend to; three duties of great importance, indeed, but plain and intelligible to common understandings: first, the duty of protecting the society from the violence and invasion of other independent societies; secondly, the duty of protecting, as far as possible, every member of the society from the injustice or oppression of every other member of it, or the duty of establishing an exact administration of justice; and, thirdly, the duty of erecting and maintaining certain public works, and certain public institutions...”

“Our lack of power and our oppression are one and the same, Inan. Without power we’re maggots. Without power the monarchy treats us like scum!”

″...see how the strong oppress the weak.”

“Such glimpses of oppressive dark naturally led his thinking to Gosling-- Gosling Cornivinous Arbour of the Cornivinius Arbours-- a powerful family with ties to some of the most ancient bloodlines of Boschenberg and Brandenbrass.”

And what hast thou to do with all these iron men, and their opinions? They have kept thy better part in bondage too long already!”

He had learned to regard his father as an oppressor rather than a friend

“Master, of a million mouths, is not one unfed?”

Now I say that with cruelty and oppression it is everybody’s business to interfere when they see it;