Best 523 quotes in «oppression quotes» category

One hour devoted to mourning and lamenting the Stolen equality of the weak is nobler than a Century filled with greed and usurpation.

One is that if women’s sexuality in Africa wasn’t under assault, if women were able to say no, if women weren’t subject to predatory attacks by men, or predatory behavior generally, then you would have a disease in Africa called AIDS. But you wouldn’t have a pandemic.

One way to be sure you are not making the wrong decision, is to look vertically upwards

One would never defeat one's circumstances by working and saving one's pennies; one would never, by working, acquire that many pennies, and, besides, the social treatment accorded even the most successful Negroes proved that one needed, in order to be free, something more than a bank account. One needed a handle, a lever, a means of inspiring fear. It was absolutely clear that the police would whip you and take you in as long as they could get away with it, and that everyone else—housewives, taxi-drivers, elevator boys, dishwashers, bartenders, lawyers, judges, doctors, and grocers—would never, by the operation of any generous human feeling, cease to use you as an outlet for his frustrations and hostilities.

On Lou's lips a trace of pinot and out of them poured tales of acts of viciousness worthy of the great Lucifer himself, stories told through the night, the tortures, the beatings, the broken bones, every school has its Tigellinus, but his had more than one and each with followers, all-American boys who delighted in discovering how much pain a soul could withstand, two suicide attempts and all his parents and school could do was try to make Lou change his behavior, his behavior, his behavior, his, his, his, to modify his being just a bit. It gets better, Doc, fucking gets better, no one dared suggest that maybe the family and the school should change, or heaven forbid, that it was the all-Americans who should be modifying their beings, no, the homo should grin and bear it dumbly...

On with the murderous dance.

Oppression only lasts for a season. Change the way you fight and the way you think so that you are able to break free and walk out of the situation. Correct it and get it right. Do what it takes to win.

Oppressions are by definition linked--linked by common ideologies, by institutional forces, and by socialization that makes oppressions normative and invisible.

Oppressions are linked. We cannot free human beings without freeing cows, sows, and hens along with women and men who are systematically oppressed by those in power. Rather than seek to fight our way up the patriarchal ladder, those working for social justice need to dismantle hierarchies, and cease to exploit all those who are less powerful—even if we must give up a few culinary favorites in the process . . . . Each of us decides, over the course of our daily lives, whether we will ignore the suffering of nonhuman animals . . . . We choose where our money goes, and in the process, we choose whether to boycott cruelty and support change, or melt ambiguously back into the masses.

Oppress several, and you have several enemies. Oppress many, and you have many enemies. Oppress numerous, and you have numerous enemies. Oppress countless, and you have countless enemies.

Oppression is opposition.

Oppression is unjustly distributed.

Oppressed peoples are always being asked to stretch a little more, to bridge the gap between blindness and humanity.

Oppression has been in existence as long as man himself has been in existence.

Oppression Now dreams Are not available To the dreamers, Nor songs To the singers. In some lands Dark night And cold steel Prevail-- But the dream Will come back, And the song Break Its jail.

Other unsolved murders or untimely deaths were readily blamed on the supposedly sinister Jews: If a Jewish doctor failed to save a life, the whole Jewish community might be attacked and fined.

P20 - The rightist sectarian wants to slow down the historical process, to domesticate time and thus to domesticate men and women.

Peace with non-fundamentalists terrifies the fundamentalist because to them, being Christian doesn't mean just being 'good' - it means being 'better' than others. Being better that others means having to see them as enemies - and making war on them. The fundamentalist views not being allowed to make war on their enemies as oppression of their faith, or defeat.

P15 - Our advanced technological society is rapidly making objects of us and subtly programming us into conformity to the logic of its system to the degree that this happens, we are also becoming submerged in a new "Culture of Silence".

P60- one does not liberate people by alienating them. P62- consciousness is the constant unveiling of reality.

Part of how they make you obey is by making obedience seem peaceful, while resistance is violence. But really, either choice is about violence, one way or another.

Poverty, oppression, grief and depression will increase, if a country does not live according to the rules of God.

Political scientists and professors are the new clergy; the clergy of oppression.

People either build a castle or a dungeon. The former by their virtues, pull people into positive edifices with gainful impression. The later by their vices, push people into negative huts with painful oppression.

Perhaps Bug and Tony should have been allies. But any successful structure of domination always gets the weak to reject each other.

Persecution complexes are reaffirming to those who benefit from unearned privileges.

Poverty is economic oppression. Tyranny is political oppression. Oppose those who oppress others. Support those who liberate others.

Power is given only to those you allow to have power over you. No man was born with a master. The only master of all is the Creator, and he created all men to be free. Freedom is a God-given right, not a human-granted gift. No man should have to fight to breathe in good health and peace.

Power without compassion is like a giant that blocks the sunlight.

Privilege is when you contribute to the oppression of others and then claim that you are the one being discriminated against.

Sadly, atheists are becoming everything they aren't supposed to be: obnoxious, oppressive, loud, pushy, smug, condescending and annoying. Since when did the definition of atheism become "an anti-religious person"? It's one thing to say "I don't believe in God because I see no proof in God. We'll just agree to disagree". It's another thing to make it your sworn duty to put down and berate religious people, to view them as primitive morons, to turn every conversation into a debate and to make it your mission to put forth this vision of a faith-free society fueled only by science and technology. This kind of oppression is against everything atheists stand for. Atheists believe in the freedom of choice, the choice to not be religious if one does not want to be. This does not mean being pushy or rude towards anybody else who has made their own choices to be religious. For some people, religion gives them a purpose, helps them cope with trauma and grief, gives them hope, gives them something to hold onto. So, as long as they aren't pushing their faith on others, why should atheists do the same thing to them?

Psychotherapy and counselling should make people aware of themselves and of the difficulties which they face. This then gives them the freedom to choose for themselves. In this sense, unlike behaviour therapy, psychotherapy is value-free: no advice, suggestions or recriminations are given. Indeed the only value of psychotherapy is respect for the individual. Such respect, however, in a mechanistic and objectifying society ... becomes a political act.

(...) psychiatrists today recognize the contortionist's act that was required of women in an age when they were expected to stifle their own healthiest impulses. (...) "To be able to renounce your own achievements without feeling that you were sacrificing requires constant effort. To be lovely and unaggressive, a woman spends a lifetime keeping hostile or resentful impulses down. Even healthy self-assertion is often sacrificed since it may be mistaken by hostility. Therefore, [women] often repress their initiative, give up their aspirations, and unfortunately end up excessively dependent with a deep sense of insecurity and uncertainty about their abilities and their worth.

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people.

Resistance to a system is almost always presented on the terms of the system. It’s so much easier, when we gain agency, to use it to adapt rather than to oppose.

Saying something is 'politically correct' is often a way of dismissing the voices of the oppressed.

Religion, which was obviously created to give meaning and purpose to people, has become part of the oppression. This is true in both Eastern and Western religious traditions. The Buddha, Jesus and Muhammad were all revolutionaries who critiqued and attempted to dismantle the corrupt societal traditions of their time. Yet their teachings, like most things in human society, have been distorted and co-opted by the confused and power-hungry patriarchal tradition. What were wonce the creation myths of ancient cultures, have become doctrines of oppression. More blood has been spilled and more people oppressed in the name of religion than for any other reason in history.

Remember: Oppression thrives off isolation. Connection is the only thing that can save us.

Resist any form of oppression.

Saying, “I don’t agree with you,” or going so far as to say, “I think your belief structure is childish,” does not amount to persecution. Insensitivity is not the same as harassment or oppression.

Saying of the Prophet Oppression When oppression exists, even the bird dies in its nest.

Self-hatred is self-imprisonment. Self-forgiveness is self-liberation. You have the right to suppress yourself, oppress yourself and depress yourself. You have the right to impress yourself too. Feel happy!

Serikali inayodhulumu wananchi wake ni hatari kuliko simba.

She was mourning all her life - not for her husband, who had released her with his death, but for her own dead heart.

Seule l’oppression devrait craindre l’expression complète de la liberté.

Sexual objectification doesn't get oppressive until it is done consistently, and to a specific group of people, and with no regard whatsoever paid to their humanity. Then it ceases to become about desire and starts to be about control. Seeing another person as meat and fat and bone and nothing else gives you power over them, if only for an instant. Structural sexual objection of women draws that instant out into an entire matrix of hurt. It tells us that women are bodies first, idealised, subservient bodies, and men are not.

That Need to know Your enemy To survive Is bitter.

Striking a balance in life is tough, but trying to strike balance and remain fair in the face of imbalance and oppression is even tougher.

Take terrorism, one example among the methods used in that struggle. We know that leftist tradition condemns terrorism and political assassination. When the colonized uses them, the leftist colonizer becomes unbearably embarrassed. He makes an effort to separate them from the colonized's voluntary action; to make an epiphenomenon out of his struggle. They are spontaneous outbursts of masses too long oppressed, or better yet, acts by unstable, untrustworthy elements which the leader of the movement has difficulty in controlling. Even in Europe, very few people admitted that the oppression of the colonized was so great, the disproportion of forces so overwhelming, that they had reached the point, whether morally correct or not, of using violent means voluntarily. The leftist colonizer tried in vain to explain actions which seemed incomprehensible, shocking and politically absurd. For example, the death of children and persons outside of the struggle, or even of colonized persons who, without being basically opposed, disapproved of some small aspect of the undertaking. At first he was so disconcerted that the best he could do was to deny such actions; for they would fit nowhere in his view of the problem. That it could be the cruelty of oppression which explained the blind fury of the reaction hardly seemed to be an argument to him; he can't approve acts of the colonized which he condemns in the colonizers because these are exactly why he condemns colonization. Then, after having suspected the information to be false, he says, as a last resort, that such deeds are errors, that is, they should not belong to the essence of the movement. He bravely asserts that the leaders certainly disapprove of them. A newspaper-man who always supported the cause of the colonized, weary of waiting for censure which was not forthcoming, finally called on certain leaders to take a public stand against the outrages, Of course, received no reply; he did not have the additional naïveté to insist.

So long as tyranny exists, in whatever form, man's deepest aspiration must resist it as inevitably as man must breathe.