Oppressed Quotes - Page 23

• Fortunately, historians are now beginning to recognise the historic role of Islam as a liberating force for peoples oppressed by the burdens of unjust social systems.

  Aly Khan

  Islam, Roles, Unjust

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• The oppressed find in the oppressors their model of 'manhood.'

  Paulo Freire

  Models, Oppressors, Manhood

  Paulo Freire (2014). “Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition”, p.33, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

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• Power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed.

  Wally Lamb

  Defeat, Used, Wells

  Wally Lamb (1998). “I Know This Much Is True”, p.897, Cambridge University Press

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• The experience of oppressed people is that the living of one’s life is confined and shaped by forces and barriers which are not accidental or occasional and hence avoidable, but are systematically related to each other in such a way as to catch one between and among them and restrict or penalize motion in any direction. It is the experience of being caged in: all avenues, in every direction, are blocked or booby trapped.

  Marilyn Frye

  People, Way, Life Is

  Marilyn Frye (1983). “The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory”, Crossing Press, Incorporated

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• Institutions work this way. A son is murdered by the police, and nothing is done. The institutions send the victim's family on a merry-go-round, going from one agency to another, until they wear out and give up. this is a very effective way to beat down poor and oppressed people, who do not have the time to prosecute their cases. Time is money to poor people. To go to Sacramento means loss of a day's pay - often a loss of job. If this is a democracy, obviously it is a bourgeois democracy limited to the middle and upper classes. Only they can afford to participate in it.

  Huey Newton

  Jobs, Giving Up, Mean

  Huey P. Newton (2009). “Revolutionary Suicide: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.128, Penguin

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• British rule depends upon repression and collaboration and the Irish people should recognise that those who collaborate with Britain in exchange for a slice of the cake will implement British policy and remain silent when Irish people are murdered and oppressed. It is they who are responsible for prolonging the war in Ireland. Without the quislings, without the collaborators, we would already have reached freedom.

  Martin McGuinness

  War, Cake, People

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• I learnt from Hussein how to achieve victory while being oppressed.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Intellectual, Victory, Hussain

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• Since the social victim has been oppressed by society, he comes to feel that his individual life will be improved more by changes in society than by his own initiative. Without realizing it, he makes society rather than himself the agent of change. The power he finds in his victimization may lead him to collective action against society, but it also encourages passivity within the sphere of his personal life.

  Shelby Steele

  Black, Agents, May

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• It is incorrect to classify the revolt of the Negro as simply a radical conflict of black against white or as a purely American problem. Rather, we are today seeing a global rebellion of the oppressed against the oppressor, the exploited against the exploiter.

  Malcolm X

  White, Black, Today

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• My anxious recollections, my sympathetic feeling, and my best wishes are irresistibly excited whensoever, in any country, I see an oppressed nation unfurl the banners of freedom.

  George Washington

  Country, Best Wishes, Feelings

  George Washington, Stephen Lucas (1999). “The Quotable George Washington: The Wisdom of an American Patriot”, p.38, Rowman & Littlefield

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• Happy, thrice happy shall they be pronounced hereafter, who have contributed any thing, who have performed the meanest office in erecting this stupendous fabrick of Freedom and Empire on the broad basis of Independency; who have assisted in protecting the rights of humane nature and establishing an Asylum for the poor and oppressed of all nations and religions.

  George Washington

  Rights, Office, Asylums

  George Washington, Jared Sparks (1835). “The Writings of George Washington: pt. II. Correspondence and miscellaneous papers relating to the American revolution: (v. 3) June, 1775-July, 1776. (v. 4) July, 1776-July] 1777. (v. 5) July, 1777-July, 1778. (v. 6) July, 1778-March, 1780. (v. 7) March, 1780-April, 1781. (v. 8) April, 1781-December, 1783”, p.568

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• Animal liberation is also human liberation. Animal liberationists care about the quality of life for all. We recognize our kinship with all feeling beings. We identify with the powerless and the vulnerable, the victims, all those dominated, oppressed and exploited. And it is the non-human animals whose suffering is the most intense, widespread, expanding, systematic and socially sanctioned of all.

  Henry Spira

  Animal, Feelings, Suffering

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• We need to realize that we should be on the side of any human being who is oppressed.

  Tariq Ramadan

  Needs, Sides, Realizing

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• At the end of the day it doesn't matter which group is most oppressed or whether they are identically oppressed, what matters is that no group be oppressed.

  Keith Boykin

  Gay, What Matters, The End Of The Day

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• The Theatre of the Oppressed is theatre in this most archaic application of the word. In this usage, all human beings are Actors (they act!) and Spectators (they observe!).

  Augusto Boal

  Theatre, Actors, Usage

  Augusto Boal (2005). “Games for Actors and Non-Actors”, p.15, Routledge

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• When men are oppressed, it's a tragedy. When women are oppressed, it's tradition.

  Letty Cottin Pogrebin

  Bad Ass, Men, Tragedy

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• In order for us as poor and oppressed people to become part of a society that is meaningful, the system under which we now exist has to be radically changed... It means facing a system that does not lend its self to your needs and devising means by which you change that system.

  Ella Baker

  Meaningful, Self, Order

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• There are 2,000 verses of Scripture that tell us we must be committed to protecting the poor and the oppressed... There is no concern of Scripture that is addressed so often and so powerfully as reaching out to the poor.

  Tony Campolo

  Scripture, Poor, Reaching

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• Pedagogy of the Oppressed resonated with progressive educators, already committed to a 'child-centered' rather than a 'teacher-directed' approach to classroom instruction. Freire's rejection of teaching content knowledge seemed to buttress what was already the ed schools' most popular theory of learning, which argued that students should work collaboratively in constructing their own knowledge and that the teacher should be a 'guide on the side,' not a 'sage on the stage.'

  Sol Stern

  Education, Teacher, Children

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• If the American Revolution had produced nothing but the Declaration of Independence, it would have been worth while. . . . The beauty and cogency of the preamble, reaching back to remotest antiquity and forward so an indefinite future, have lifted the hearts of millions of men and will continue to do. . . . These words are more revolutionary than anything written by Robespierre, Marx, or Lenin, more explosive than the atom, a continual challenge to ourselves as well as an inspiration to the oppressed of all the world.

  Samuel Eliot Morison

  Inspiration, Heart, Men

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• When it's played the way is supposed to be played, basketball happens in the air; flying, floating, elevated above the floor, levitating the way oppressed peoples of this earth imagine themselves in their dreams.

  John Edgar Wideman

  Basketball, Dream, Air

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• Much did I rage when young, Being by the world oppressed, But now with flattering tongue It speeds the parting guest.

  William Butler Yeats

  World, Guests, Tongue

  William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.179, Wordsworth Editions

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• Our most merciful Father, seeing us to be oppressed and overwhelmed with the curse of the law . . . sent his only Son into the world and laid upon him all the sins of all men, saying, 'You be Peter that denier, Paul that persecutor, blasphemer and cruel oppressor, David that adulterer, that sinner who ate the apple in Paradise, that thief who hung upon the cross, and briefly, you be the person who has committed the sins of all men. See therefore that you pay and satisfy for them.'

  Martin Luther

  Father, Son, Men

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• Heavy thoughts bring on physical maladies; when the soul is oppressed so is the body.

  Martin Luther

  Worry, Soul, Body

  Table-Talk 'Of Temptation and Tribulation'

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• America has not been a story or a byword. That small community of Pilgrims prospered and, driven by the dreams and, yes, by the ideas of the Founding Fathers, went on to become a beacon to all the oppressed and poor of the world.

  Ronald Reagan

  Dream, Father, Ideas

  United States. President (1981-1989 : Reagan), Ronald Reagan (1983). “Ronald Reagan”

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