Best 523 quotes in «oppression quotes» category

When we oppose oppression, we lift our hands from the collective reins that empower such oppression.

When we place ourselves in a position of judgment, then we turn ourselves into oppressors. Healthy self-esteem cannot exist side-by-side with oppression of any kind.

When you have a hammer in your hand, everything around you starts looking like a nail.

Where pre-Enlightenment Europe was sporadically cruel, post-Enlightenment Europe was systematically inhumane; where the pre-Enlightenment was haphazardly prejudiced, the Enlightenment was systematically racist, creating a "scientific" hierarchy of humanity that justified imperialism. "Reason" became another name for bourgeois oppression, the triumph of science merely an excuse for more orderly forms of social subjugation.

Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression. In our Governments, the real power lies in the majority of the Community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from the acts of Government contrary to the sense of its constituents, but from acts in which the Government is the mere instrument of the major number of the constituents.

Whichever group is in ascension at a given moment is, historically speaking, both unlikely to acknowledge the existence of abuses or bias, and also to justify the bias on any grounds they can - social, biological, what have you.

While these veils conceal women, at the same time they expose the rampant, male oppression which is their jailor. Polyester imprisonment by compulsion is ungodly and (like the fiber) distinctly man-made.

White people covered the earth like lice.

Who can blame slaves for being cunning? They are constantly compelled to resort to it. It is the only weapon of the weak and oppressed against the strength of their tyrants.

White liberals are always saying, "What can we do?” I mean, they’re always coming to help black people. I thought of an analogy. If you were walking down the street and a man had a gun on another man – let’s say both of them were white – and you had to help somebody, whom would you help? It’s obvious to me that if I were walking down the street, and a man had a gun on another man, and I was going to help, I’d help the man who didn’t have the gun, if the man who had the gun was just pulling the gun on the other man for no apparent reason – if he was just going to rob him or shoot him because he didn’t like him. The only way I could help is either to get a gun and shoot the man with the gun, or take the gun away from him – join the fellow who doesn’t have a gun and both of us gang up on the man with the gun. But white liberals never do that. When the man has the gun, they walk around him and they come to the victim, and they say “Let me help you,” and what they mean is “help you adjust to the situation with the man who has the gun on you." If indeed white liberals are going to help, their only job is to get the gun from the man and talk to him, because he is a sick man. The black man is not the sick man, it is the white man who is sick, he’s the one who picked up the gun.

Who is to say that robbing a people of its language is less violent than war?

Why did Irish people vote to introduce gay marriage? Because we know what discrimination feels like and if we can take the boot of oppression off someone else's throat, we'll do it every time.

With the overall emphasis on condemnation comes a covertly oppressive message of grace. Mary recalls, “The leader of my women’s Bible study is an ordained clergywoman. She told us that no one’s gone to hell for having sex before marriage. If we ’fall off the wagon,’ just repent.” While this kind of message seems to help balance the Puritanical influence, it falls short of affirming sexual desire and its satisfaction for the single woman. The need to repent still declares that her participation in sexual activity is sinful without exception. This declaration is proving to be false and oppressive, sending the single African American woman on an endless sin/ repent merry-go-round of wondering if G ~ d is pleased with her. This woman’s sexual desire is normative, and unrelenting. What does G ~ d think of her acts of satisfaction, whether alone or with a partner? Perhaps a church can help by preaching and teaching a message of holistic human goodness.

Wir sind das Volk!" Dieser Satz hat uns gelehrt, dass wir, wenn wir unserer Sehnsucht glauben und ihr vertrauen, die Angst verlieren können. Eine Angst, die willfährige Dienerin jeder Art von nicht legitimierter Herrschaft ist, die uns ohnmächtig macht, die uns bindet. In dem Augenblick aber, in dem wir unsere Angst als Angst benennen und Anpassung und Angst als Geschwisterkinder erkennen, sind wir möglicherweise bereit zu erproben: Können wir auch ohne sie leben? In genau diesem Augenblick wachsen uns jene Kräfte zu, die eine ganze Gesellschaft verändern können.

Women hating men is not an aberrant or unexpected response, but rather natural response to being controlled, and to being viewed as less than human by an oppressor. Afro-American slaves hated their owners; women hate theirs.

Women of today are still being called upon to stretch across the gap of male ignorance and to educate men as to our existence and our needs. This is an old and primary tool of all oppressors to keep the oppressed occupied with the master's concerns. Now we hear that is is the task of women of Color to educated white women - in the face of tremendous resistance - as to our existence, our differences, our relative roles in our joint survival. This is a diversion of energies and a tragic repetition of racist patriarchal thought.

Women exercise agency in order to survive the power relations and oppressive circumstances in which they find themselves. The theoretical task, Miriam argues, is for radical feminist theory to 'theorize freedom in terms of women’s collective political agency (power to): this task requires an understanding that freedom is not negotiating within a situation taken as inevitable, but rather, a capacity to radically transform and/or determine the situation itself'.

Yet, feeling his way, starting by the passive opposition of small thefts, stealing sausage ends and crusts of bread when Signora Squeers was asleep, he (Casanova) progressed until he arrived at the thought “ that it was ridiculous to be oppressed

Words have oppressed, and liberated countless. It is a weapon that can be used to inspire and save lives, or discourage and forsake them.

Years from now we might be saying it's hyperbolic to compare someone to Donald Trump, because we will be quite sure no one is that cruel.

You can not fight "RACISM" when the "MIND" is weak. You can't fight "INJUSTICE" or "CORRUPTION" when you're not a true follower of your soul. You can't fight "OPPRESSION" when you "THINK" and "ACT" like the oppressor. You can't become a "CHANGE" when you keep on accepting the same old results.You can't become a valuable source in society when you devalued your brothers and sisters from distant lands. It is impossible to change America when you see foul practices at institutions and don't speak up because it is not affecting you. What affect others should affect you mentally and physically, be part of the "HUMAN RACE." Be your brother's/sister's keeper no matter what religion or race he or she is. Be the change that you want to see in America.

You can get to oppression through regulation, especially in an "Idea Economy" which necessitates liberty of the mind to explore.

... You can only properly oppress people through a stability bordering on stagnation.

You can't fight and claim you want to be free from the oppressor while still holding tight to things the oppressor gave you.

You can't forgive your captor and simultaneously be upset at your place in society.

You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs, is what he says. We thought we could do better. Better? I say, in a small voice. How can he think this is better? Better never means better for everyone, he says. It always means worse, for some.

You know and I know that the country is celebrating one hundred years of freedom one hundred years too early. We cannot be free until they are free.

You have heard that it has been said, You shall love your neighbor, and hate your enemy. But I say to you, Love your enemies, Speak truth to the liars, Bless them that curse you, Do good to them that hate you, This is what they least wish you to do; In this way you will overcome all oppression.

Your people, your guards – they’re nothing more than killers, rapists, and thieves. The only difference between them and criminals is the uniforms they wear.

Your anger against every form of insult and oppression must be out of love.

Fascism is fascism. Terrorism is terrorism. Oppression is oppression.

You see, boys are taught that they can achieve whatever they want With poise, style and hard work, whatever they want Yes, that includes women’s bodies - and lives - and souls So when a woman says no and a man says “how dare you?” You can tell - You can tell that he isn’t accustomed to rejection

An educator in a system of oppression is either a revolutionary or an oppressor.

An extreme rigor is sure to arm everything against it.

As a human being, I will always feel that where there is oppression, I am with the underdog.

Being a warrior and being a struggler has been forced on me by oppression, otherwise I would have been free to be so much more.

But it is not really difference the oppressor fears so much as similarity.

Feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression.

You should never leave your "house of bread", under any pretence, whether it is oppression, troubles or hardships.

A certain inequality in regard to property still exists in a socialist society. But in a socialist society there is no unemployment, no exploitation, no oppression of nationalities.

A desire to resist oppression is implanted in the nature of man.

A handful of soldiers is always better than a mouthful of arguments.

All oppression creates a state of war.

A sexual revolution begins with the emancipation of women, who are the chief victims of patriarchy, and also with the ending of homosexual oppression.

Bookishness, highest literacy, every technique of cultural propaganda and training not only can accompany bestiality and oppression and despotism but at certain points foster it.

Early spring is the time for vigorous change, a preparation for the heat-driven oppression that is to come.

Feminism has never emerged from the women who are most victimized by sexist oppression; women who are daily beaten down, mentally, physically, and spiritually - women who are powerless to change their condition in life. They are a silent majority.

He who allows oppression shares the crime.

Freedom is not won by merely overthrowing a tyrannical ruler or an oppressive regime. That is usually only the prelude to a new tyranny, a new oppression.

From joblessness to lack of education and professional skills to sexual and gender-based violence, women face a multi-faceted oppression.