Best 523 quotes in «oppression quotes» category

Men often have grievances against prominent and powerful persons. Historically, the grievances of the powerless against the powerful have furnished the steam for the engines of revolutions. My point is that in many of the famous medicolegal cases involving the issue of insanity, persons of relatively low social rank openly attacked their superiors. Perhaps their grievances were real and justified, and were vented on the contemporary social symbols of authority, the King and the Queen. Whether or not these grievances justified homicide is not our problem here. I merely wish to suggest that the issue of insanity may have been raised in these trials to obscure the social problems which the crimes intended to dramatize.

My heart isn't big enough to care for the oppressors.

My life of sin among people I’m sure he thinks are deviants is happier and more honest that his oppressive, sexist cesspool.

Nature gives children great emotional resilience to help them survive the oppressions of being small, but these oppressions still make them into slightly insane adults, either mad to seize all the power they once lacked or (more usually) mad to avoid it.

Never give up. Things may be hard, but if you quit trying they'll never get better. Stop worrying and start trusting God. It will be worth it.

No, no, my friend. You are kind, and you mean well, but you can never understand these things as I do. You've never been oppressed.

Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence?

No one knew it then because it started, as revolutions often do, as something quiet and almost routine.

No one is more vulnerable to fear than a man who keeps another in bondage. He will do anything to prevent justice from rearing its head — for he knows well what he deserves at the hands of those he subjugates.

No one forgets that they were once captive, even if they are now free.

No oppressive order could permit the oppressed to being to question: Why?

No oppressive order could permit the oppressed to begin to question: Why?

Now I understand why women want to have children - it's simply the urge to create happiness for yourself, somehow to fill the oppressive, unbearable emptiness in your soul.

Now, faced with political cases like yours, all prosecutorial organs and courts would rather be too severe than too lax. This is because treating you too severely would just be a mistake in method, but treating you too laxly would be a mistake in political direction.

No woman is responsible for altering the psyche of her oppressor, even when that psyche is embodied in another woman.

Now, Woolf calls her fictional bastion of male privilege Oxbridge, so I'll call mine Yarvard. Even though she cannot attend Yarvard because she is a woman, Judith cheerfully applies for admission at, let's call it, Smithcliff, a prestigious women's college. She is denied admission on the grounds that the dorms and classrooms can't accommodate wheelchairs, that her speech pattern would interfere with her elocution lessons, and that her presence would upset the other students. There is also the suggestion that she is not good marriage material for the men at the elite college to which Smithcliff is a bride-supplying "sister school." The letter inquires as to why she hasn't been institutionalized. When she goes to the administration building to protest the decision, she can't get up the flight of marble steps on the Greek Revival building. This edifice was designed to evoke a connection to the Classical world, which practiced infanticide of disabled newborns.

Nos instruyen y preparan en la juventud para una profesión, para cumplir los deberes ciudadanos, para el servicio militar, nos enseñaban las reglas del aseo, a comportarnos bien y hasta a comprender lo bello (esto último no tanto). Pero la instrucción, la educación, la experiencia, no nos preparan en absoluto para la gran prueba de nuestra vida: para el arresto por nada y para el sumario sobre nada.

Not being treated as equal IS oppression

Nothing shows a greater contempt for individuality than the train. Modern civilization uses every possible means to develop individuality, and having done so, tries everything in its power to stamp it out. It allots a few square yards to each person, and tells them that they are free to lead their life as they please within that area. At the same time it erects railings around them, and threatens them with all sorts of dire consequences if they should dare to take but one step beyond their compass. It is only natural that the person who has freedom within the confines of their allocated plot, should desire to have freedom to do as they wish outside it too. Civilization's pitiable subjects are forever snapping and snarling at imprisoning bars, for they have been made as fierce as tigers by the gift of liberty, but have been thrown into a cage to preserve universal peace. This, however, is not a true peace. It is the peace of the tiger in a menagerie who lies glowering at those who have come to look at it.

Notwithstanding the memories of slavery, and in the face poverty, ignorance, terrorism, and subjugation still deeply woven into their lives, the embittered past of blacks was taken onto a much higher plane of intellectual and artistic consideration during the Renaissance.

Often we blame a region's religion when the oppression instead may be rooted in its culture. Yet, that acknowledged, it's also true that . . . it is often cited by the oppressors.

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

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.

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

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...

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.

On with the murderous dance.

Oppression is opposition.

Oppression is unjustly distributed.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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".

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.