Oppression Quotes - Page 15

• When anarchists are having a debate, they're having a debate about tactics, 'Should you do this?', 'Should you do that?' The question isn't 'Should you do this?', 'Should you do that?', the primary question is how do you build confidence among the masses of people who experience hierarchies, who experience exploitation, who experience oppression.

  Vijay Prashad

  People, Tactics, Hierarchy

  "“Exiles From the Future”: An Interview with Vijay Prashad". Interview with Andrew Stewart, www.counterpunch.org. August 17, 2016.

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• In the early period of Left struggles, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, there were many different trajectories for the struggle, whether you call it 'syndicalism' or 'anarchism' or, at the time, 'social democracy', eventually 'Communism', these were different theories of struggle. But all of them shared a basic understanding that the people...experience exploitation, they experience oppression, but they're not prepared to rise up.

  Vijay Prashad

  Struggle, People, Understanding

  "'Exiles From the Future': An Interview with Vijay Prashad". Interview with Andrew Stewart, www.counterpunch.org. August 17, 2016.

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• In all of human history no country or no people have suffered such terrible slavery, conquest and foreign oppression and no country and no people have struggled so strenuously for their emancipation than Sicily and the Sicilians.

  Karl Marx

  Country, People, Slavery

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• I think being born in America and growing up exclusively within the American boundaries of race and race oppression is a very different experience for those of us who grew up under the boundaries of race and race experience in the Caribbean or for those who grew up in Africa.

  Harry Belafonte

  Growing Up, Thinking, America

  "Harry Belafonte Birthday Tribute". The Tavis Smiley Show, www.pbs.org. February 28, 2017.

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• I think America offers a dream that cannot be fulfilled as easily anywhere else in the world as it could be fulfilled here. Although oppression was common to all of us, those styles of oppression gave us the opportunity to see the world in dimensions we didn't quite see growing up in any one place.

  Harry Belafonte

  Dream, Growing Up, Opportunity

  "Harry Belafonte Birthday Tribute". "The Tavis Smiley Show" with Tavis Smiley, www.pbs.org. February 28, 2017.

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• The feminists who are aware of the effects of patriarchy realize that we are all in the same boat from the dangers of patriarchy, and that the oppression of women is universal.

  Nawal El Saadawi

  Feminist, Realizing, Boat

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• All the nations of the earth are crying out for liberty and equality. Away, away with tyranny and oppression!

  Maria W. Stewart

  Equality, Liberty, Earth

  Maria W. Stewart, Marilyn Richardson (1987). “Maria W. Stewart, America's First Black Woman Political Writer: Essays and Speeches”, p.9, Indiana University Press

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• Oppressed people are treacherous for the simple reason that treachery is both a means of survival and a way to curry favor with one's oppressor.

  Florence King

  Mean, Simple, People

  Florence King (1993). “Southern Ladies & Gentlemen”, p.155, Macmillan

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• The root of oppression is the loss of memory.

  Paula Gunn Allen

  Memories, Loss, Roots

  "The Sacred Hoop". Book by Paula Gunn Allen, www.nytimes.com. 1986.

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• Coercive measures may have a restraining effect for a time, but can never subdue an untractable spirit: it is only by engaging the affections and enlarging the understanding, that the heart can be meliorated or principles be formed; for like a bow forcibly bent, the mind recoils from oppression with elastic power.

  Mary Hays

  Heart, Understanding, Mind

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• It is the curse of minorities in this power-worshipping world that either from fear or from an uncertain policy of expedience they distrust their own standards and hesitate to give voice to their deeper convictions, submitting supinely to estimates and characterizations of themselves as handed down by a not unprejudiced dominant majority.

  Anna Julia Cooper

  Voice, Giving, Majority

  Anna Julia Cooper (1988). “A Voice From the South”, p.43, Oxford University Press

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• The impious man, who sells his country's freedom
  Makes all the guilt of tyranny his own.
  His are her slaughters, her oppressions his;
  Just heav'n! reserve your choicest plagues for him,
  And blast the venal wretch.

  Henry Martyn

  Country, Men, Guilt

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• Oppression does not know the meaning of provincial boundaries. Aren't our energies better spent fighting the common enemy instead of each other?

  Benazir Bhutto

  War, Fighting, Enemy

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• To fight oppression, and to work as best we can for a sane organization of society, we do not have to abandon the state of mind offreedom. If we do that we are letting the same thuggery in by the back door that we are fighting off in front of the house.

  John Dos Passos

  Fighting, Thoughtful, Thinking

  John Dos Passos (1988). “John Dos Passos: the major nonfictional prose”

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• Coming out, all the way out, is offered more and more as the political solution to our oppression. The argument goes that, if people could see just how many of us there are, some in very important places, the negative stereotype would vanish overnight. ...It is far more realistic to suppose that, if the tenth of the population that is gay became visible tomorrow, the panic of the majority of people would inspire repressive legislation of a sort that would shock even the pessimists among us.

  Jane Rule

  Gay, People, Political

  Jane Rule (2013). “Outlander: Short Stories and Essays”, p.247, Open Road Media

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• In poor environment, I find great inspiration. Many of the men and women whom I admire as artists, the things they write, the songs they sing, the admission is filled with inspired moments to overcome oppression.

  Harry Belafonte

  Song, Inspiration, Writing

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Freeing people from oppression and despair is eternally right.

  George W. Bush

  People, Despair

  Final Radio Address, delivered 17 January 2009

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• The world has paid a heavy price for the lack of democracy in most of the Middle East. Operation Ajax [CIA code for the August 1953 coup] taught tyrants and aspiring tyrants there that the world's most powerful governments were willing to tolerate limitless oppression as long as oppressive regimes were friendly to the West and to Western oil companies. That helped tilt the political balance in a vast region away from freedom and toward dictatorship.

  Stephen Kinzer

  Powerful, Tyrants, Oil

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• Jefferson, Madison and many others taught that complex laws and codes were sure signs of oppression. They agreed with Montesquieu, Lock and Hume and that laws must be simple....and indeed that the entire legal code must be simple enough that every citizen knows the entire law. If a person doesn't know the law....he shouldn't be held liable for breaking it or freedom is greatly reduced.

  Oliver DeMille

  Simple, Law, Locks

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• I live in the United States, but I do not know exactly where. My address is wherever there is a fight against oppression.

  Mother Jones

  Fighting, Shoes, United States

  "Ten Ways to Fight Trump" by David Helvarg, progressive.org. February 3, 2017.

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• Statism – the subordination of the individual to the state -
  leads inevitably to the most hideous oppression.

  Andrew Bernstein

  Individual, States, Subordination

  Andrew Bernstein (2005). “The Capitalist Manifesto: The Historic, Economic and Philosophic Case for Laissez-faire”, University Press of Amer

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• Our history in this country dates from the moment that restless men among us became restless under oppression and rose against it . . . Agitation, contentions, ceaseless unrest, constant aspiring -- a race so moved must prevail.

  Timothy Thomas Fortune

  Country, Men, Race

  Timothy Thomas Fortune (2008). “T. Thomas Fortune, the Afro-American Agitator: A Collection of Writings, 1880-1928”

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• Had middle class black women begun a movement in which they had labeled themselves "oppressed," no one would have taken them seriously.

  Bell Hooks

  Taken, Class, African American

  bell hooks (2014). “Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center”, p.7, Routledge

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• For too long, many nations, including my own, tolerated, even excused, oppression in the Middle East in the name of stability. Oppression became common, but stability never arrived. We must take a different approach. We must help the reformers of the Middle East as they work for freedom, and strive to build a community of peaceful, democratic nations.

  George W. Bush

  Names, Long, Community

  United Nations General Assembly Address, delivered 21 September 2004, New York, NY

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• Christian soldiers armed with virtue- hearts afire with blind obsession, cannot see the difference 'twixt compassion and oppression

  Lucretia Mott

  Christian, Heart, Compassion

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