Oppressed Quotes - Page 2

• Oppression that is clearly inexorable and invincible does not give rise to revolt but to submission.

  Simone Weil

  Peace, Giving, Doe

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• That cry of the soul to be lifted out of the bondage of the narrow circle of life, which carries up to God the protest and yearning of suffering man, never finds a more sublime expression than where humanity is oppressed and religion is corrupt.

  Hall Caine

  Men, Expression, Circles

  Hall Caine (2016). “The Scapegoat”, p.6, The Floating Press

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• Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.

  Frederick Douglass

  Peace, Patriotic, Ignorance

  Speech on the twenty-fourth anniversary of emancipation in the District of Columbia,Washington, D.C., Apr. 1886

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• Time is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. Truth is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. You don't need anything else.

  Malcolm X

  Freedom, Needs, Slavery

  "Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements". Book edited by George Breitman, 1965.

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• You can't hold a man down without staying down with him.

  Booker T. Washington

  Letting Go, Stay Strong, Men

  "The Great Quotations" edited by George Seldes, (p. 641), 1971.

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• Oppressed groups are frequently placed in the situation of being listened to only if we frame our ideas in the language that is familiar to and comfortable for a dominant group. This requirement often changes the meaning of our ideas and works to elevate the ideas of dominant groups.

  Patricia Hill Collins

  Change, Ideas, Society

  Patricia Hill Collins (2002). “Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment”, p.7, Routledge

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• Tyranny destroys or strengthens the individual; freedom enervates him, until he becomes no more than a puppet. Man has more chances of saving himself by hell than by paradise.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Men, Saving, Paradise

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

  George Orwell

  Time, Freedom, Future

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• Each time a man stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope.

  Robert Kennedy

  Inspirational, Motivational, Change

  Robert F. Kennedy (1998). “Make Gentle the Life of the World: The Vision of Robert F. Kennedy”, Harcourt

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

  Georg C. Lichtenberg

  Soldier, Argument, Oppression

  "Aphorisms". Book by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. Notebook E 19, 1799.

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• Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, . . . neither persons nor property will be safe.

  Frederick Douglass

  Ignorance, Justice, Black History

  Speech on the twenty-fourth anniversary of emancipation in the District of Columbia,Washington, D.C., Apr. 1886

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• The oppressed, instead of striving for liberation, tend themselves to become oppressors.

  Paulo Freire

  Strive, Liberation, Pedagogy Of The Oppressed

  Paulo Freire (2014). “Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition”, p.32, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

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• Do not be misled by the fact that you are at liberty and relatively free; that for the moment you are not under lock and key: you have simply been granted a reprieve.

  Ryszard Kapuscinski

  Keys, Liberty, Locks

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• It is essential for the oppressed to realize that when they accept the struggle for humanization they also accept, from that moment, their total responsibility for the struggle.

  Paulo Freire

  Struggle, Responsibility, Essentials

  Paulo Freire (2014). “Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition”, p.48, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

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• True enough, the country is calm. Calm as a morgue or a grave, would you not say?

  Vaclav Havel

  Country, Calm, Oppression

  Open letter to Dr. Gustáv Husák, Communist President, April 08, 1975.

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• Never elated when someone's oppressed, never dejected when another one's blessed.

  Alexander Pope

  Attitude, Blessed, Dejected

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• Gossip is the opiate of the oppressed.

  Erica Jong

  Reality, Envy, Gossip

  Fear of Flying ch. 6 (1973)

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• 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.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Freedom, Patriotic, Equality

  First Inaugural Address, 4 Mar. 1801

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• Dehumanization, although a concrete historical fact, is not a given destiny but the result of an unjust order that engenders violence in the oppressors, which in turn dehumanizes the oppressed

  Paulo Freire

  Destiny, Order, Historical

  Paulo Freire (2014). “Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition”, p.31, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

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• When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression no matter how holy the motives.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Atheist, Government, Church

  Robert A. Heinlein (2007). “Glory Road”, p.318, Macmillan

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• The will to domination is a ravenous beast. There are never enough warm bodies to satiate its monstrous hunger. Once alive, this beast grows and grows, feeding on all the life around it, scouring the earth to find new sources of nourishment. This beast lives in each man who battens on female servitude.

  Andrea Dworkin

  War, Men, Female

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• Though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Majority Rule, Tyranny Of The Majority, Minorities

  First Inaugural Address, 4 Mar. 1801

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• You know, it's not the world that was my oppressor, because what the world does to you, if the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough, you begin to do to yourself.

  James A. Baldwin

  Long, Doe, World

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• the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Rights, Law, Majority Rule

  First Inaugural Address, 4 Mar. 1801

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• Nature in darkness groans and men are bound to sullen contemplation in the night: restless they turn on beds of sorrow; in their inmost brain feeling the crushing wheels, they rise, they write the bitter words of stern philosophy and knead the bread of knowledge with tears and groans.

  William Blake

  Crush, Philosophy, Writing

  William Blake (1966). “Complete Writings: With Variant Readings”, p.379, Oxford University Press, USA

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