Oppressed Quotes - Page 20

• The memory of oppressed people is one thing that cannot be taken away, and for such people, with such memories, revolt is always an inch below the surface.

  Howard Zinn

  Memories, Taken, People

  Howard Zinn (2014). “A People's History of the United States”, p.395, Pan Macmillan

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• Oppressed people are frequendy very oppressive when first liberated. And why wouldn't they be? They know best two positions. Somebody's foot on their neck or their foot on somebody's neck.

  Florynce Kennedy

  Two, Feet, People

  "Color Me Flo: My Hard Life and Good Times".

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• They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today-my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Ghetto, Home, Boys

  Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence, Delivered 4 April 1967, Riverside Church, New York City

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• The danger of oppression is not just being oppressed, it's becoming an oppressor.

  Jon Stewart

  Just Being, Becoming, Oppression

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• The Catholics had been in the position of oppressors, and the Protestants of the oppressed

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

  Catholic, Position, Protestants

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• For centuries, the world has heard the oppressed, the downtrodden and the vulnerable cry out for their freedoms, for their rights and for a chance to emerge from the shadows of the tyranny and bloodshed that they had lived with.

  Ginny Brown-Waite

  Rights, Shadow, World

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• Whose life testifies to the truth that there is no shame in being oppressed: Those who should be ashamed are they who oppress others.

  Nelson Mandela

  Shame, Should, Ashamed

  Nelson Mandela's Speech at the Zionist Christian Church Easter Conference, db.nelsonmandela.org. April 3, 1994.

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• God wants to set the oppressed free from being oppressed and the oppressors free from oppressing.

  Desmond Tutu

  Want, Oppressors

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• The poetics of the oppressed is essentially the poetics of liberation: the spectator no longer delegates power to the characters either to think or to act in his place. The spectator frees himself; he thinks and acts for himself! Theatre is action!

  Augusto Boal

  Character, Thinking, Theatre

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• To be a Jew means always being with the oppressed and never the oppressors.

  Marek Edelman

  Mean, Jew, Oppressors

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• American liberty is being destroyed by Marxist doctrines that explain society in terms of hegemonic and oppressed groups - whether classes, races or genders - fighting for suzerainty. In these societies spun out of Marxist theorizing, good will does not exist, only the material interests of warring groups. Morality resides in the oppressed, but if the oppressed succeed in becoming hegemonic, their claim to moral supremacy evaporates.

  Paul Craig Roberts

  Fighting, Class, Race

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• Do you know why this world is as bad as it is?... It is because people think only about their own business, and won't trouble themselves to stand up for the oppressed, nor bring the wrong-doers to light... My doctrine is this, that if we see cruelty or wrong that we have the power to stop, and do nothing, we make ourselves sharers in the guilt.

  Anna Sewell

  Thinking, Light, People

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• Cats are oppressed, dogs terrify them, landladies starve them, boys stone them, everybody speaks of them with contempt. If they were human beings we could talk of their oppressors with a studied violence, add our strength to theirs, even organize the oppressed and like good politicians sell our charity for power.

  William Butler Yeats

  Dog, Cat, Boys

  William Butler Yeats (2015). “A Vision: The Revised 1937 Edition: The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats”, p.5, Simon and Schuster

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• I've already got the Kingdom of Heaven in my heart! That's my nationality, my citizenship, my Country!-A Country that's never persecuted the poor or oppressed the weak or destroyed small peoples of the World like America has. It's a Country that's never lost a battle and never fought a war for the wrong reason.

  David Berg

  Country, War, Heart

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• I have lectured at the U.N. and travelled widely, giving lectures on human rights and gender inequalities in universities. But this is a life I do not wish to live. I don't want to be a showcase, I want to be in a battlefield where I can stand beside the oppressed and the poor.

  Taslima Nasrin

  Rights, Giving, Wish

  "Exiled writer says: 'I am dying every day in the west'". Interview with Anthony Dias, www.theguardian.com. August 10, 2009.

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• Women are oppressed in the east, in the west, in the south, in the north. Women are oppressed inside, outside home, a woman is oppressed in religion, she is oppressed outside religion.

  Taslima Nasrin

  Home, East, West

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• Basically, fundamentalism is a modern phenomenon. In the same way that Hitler evoked a mythological religion of German purity and the glory of the past, the Islamists use religion to evoke emotions and passions in people who have been oppressed for a long time in order to reach their purpose.

  Azar Nafisi

  Passion, Past, Order

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• The surest guide to the correctness of the path that women take is joy in the struggle. Revolution is the festival of the oppressed.

  Germaine Greer

  Women, Struggle, Joy

  Germaine Greer (1970). “The female eunuch”, Macgibbon & Kee

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• Certainly, protecting oppressed people, stopping ethnic conflict and promoting responsible governance are worthy goals. But none is as important for American security and prosperity as keeping the peace in the Middle East, Europe and East Asia.

  Michael Mandelbaum

  Europe, People, Goal

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• It is absolutely essential that the oppressed participate in the revolutionary process with an increasingly critical awareness of their role as subjects of the transformation.

  Paulo Freire

  Essentials, Roles, Transformation

  Paulo Freire (2014). “Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition”, p.127, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

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• Universities are no longer educational in any sense of the word that Rousseau would have recognised. Instead, they have become unabashed instruments of capital. Confronted with this squalid betrayal, one imagines he would have felt sick and oppressed.

  Terry Eagleton

  Betrayal, Educational, Sick

  "What would Rousseau make of our selfish age?" by Terry Eagleton, www.theguardian.com. June 27, 2012.

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• As a black woman, my politics and political affiliation are bound up with and flow from participation in my people's struggle for liberation, and with the fight of oppressed people all over the world against American imperialism.

  Angela Davis

  Struggle, Fighting, People

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• The movies that I did in the '80s were either good or bad, but I never was oppressed with any feeling - I mean, I thought it was ridiculous to play high school or college students when I was 30. But at the same time, that was really done then.

  Curtis Armstrong

  School, Mean, College

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Oppression costs the oppressor too much if the oppressed stands up and protests. The protest need not be merely physical-the throwing of stones and bullets-if it is mental, spiritual; if it expresses itself in silent, persistent dissatisfaction, the cost to the oppressor is terrific.

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Spiritual, Needs, Cost

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• Medical science has oppressed us with a new huge burden of longevity. It is in that last undesired decade, when passion is cold, appetites feeble, curiosity dulled and experience has begotten cynicism, that accidia lies in wait as the final temptation to destruction.

  Evelyn Waugh

  Lying, Passion, Waiting

  Evelyn Waugh (1983). “The Essays, Articles and Reviews of Evelyn Waugh”, Methuen

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