Oppression Quotes - Page 22

• Starting from the very reasonable, but unfortunately revolutionary concept that social practices which threaten the continuation of life on Earth must be changed, we need a theory of revolutionary ecology that will encompass social and biological issues, class struggle, and a recognition of the role of global corporate capitalism in the oppression of peoples and the destruction of nature.

  Judi Bari

  Struggle, Practice, Class

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• Neither the chains of dictatorship nor the fetters of oppression can keep down the forces of freedom for long.

  Angela Merkel

  Women, Long, Empowering

  Angela Merkel's Remarks in an Exchange of Toasts with President Obama, www.newsroomamerica.com. June 7, 2011.

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• Let me tell you humans something. You are not fighters. You don’t have what it takes to actually change your current living situations. You can’t even organize a decent group to combat oppression. How can beings of such low stature hope to do anything? You are not heroes. Stop pretending you are helping by playing commando and get out of the way of someone who can.

  Charles Lee

  Hero, Groups, Way

  Charles Lee (2014). “The Way To Dawn: Dominion of Eden”, p.85, BookBaby

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• To us it seems incredible that the Greek philosophers should have scanned so deeply into right and wrong and yet never noticed the immorality of slavery. Perhaps 3000 years from now it will seem equally incredible that we do not notice the immorality of our own oppression of animals.

  Brigid Brophy

  Equality, Animal, Should Have

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• Black racism is a myth created by whites to ease their guilt feelings. As long as whites can be assured that blacks are racists, they can find reasons to justify their own oppression of’ black people.

  James H. Cone

  White, Long, Racism

  James H. Cone “Black Theology and Black Power”, Orbis Books

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• A free man - is a man who is free internally. As all other people, externally he or she depends on society. Internally he or she is independent. A society can become liberated externally - from oppression, but it can become free only when the majority of people are free internally.

  Simon Soloveychik

  Independent, Men, People

  "Free Man". Manifest by Simon Soloveychik, 1994.

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• The cruelties of property and privilege are always more ferocious than the revenges of poverty and oppression. For the one aims at perpetuating resented injustice, the other is merely a momentary passion soon appeased.

  C. L. R. James

  Revenge, Passion, Poverty

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• Communists have always viewed the national question through the prism of the class struggle, believing that its solution has to be subordinated to the interests of the Revolution, to the interests of socialism. That is why Communists and all fighters for socialism believe that the main aspect of the national question is unification of the working people, regardless of their national origin, in the common struggle against every type of oppression, and for a new social system which rules out exploitation of the working people.

  Leonid Brezhnev

  Believe, Struggle, Class

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• Black Consciousness is an attitude of the mind and a way of life, the most positive call to emanate from the black world for a long time. Its essence is the realisation by the black man of the need to rally together with his brothers around the cause of their oppression - the blackness of their skin - and to operate as a group to rid themselves of the shackles that bind them to perpetual servitude.

  Steven Biko

  Brother, Attitude, Men

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• Peace does not mean just to stop wars, but also to stop oppression and injustice.

  Tawakkol Karman

  Peace, War, Mean

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• Socialism's results have ranged between the merely shabby and the truly catastrophic - poverty, strife, oppression and, on the killing fields of communism, the deaths this century of perhaps 100 million people. Against that doctrine was set a contrary, conservative belief in a law-governed liberty. It was this view which triumphed with the crumbling of the Berlin Wall. Since then, the Left has sought rehabilitation by distancing itself from its past.

  Margaret Thatcher

  Wall, Past, Views

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• The Gelaming regarded themselves as a force for good, and in many ways they were, but they were also inexorable and their compassion could often feel like oppression.

  Storm Constantine

  Compassion, Way, Force

  Storm Constantine (2004). “The Wraiths of Will and Pleasure: The First Book of the Wraeththu Histories”, p.454, Macmillan

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• Out of the mists of our long oppression, / We bring love for ourselves and each other, / And love for the gifts we bear, /So heavy and so painful the fashioning of them, /So long the road given us to travel them. A separate people, /We bring a gift to celebrate each other, /’Tis a gift to be gay! / Feel the pride of it!

  Harry Hay

  Gay, Pride, Long

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• When people use the word hell, what do they mean? They mean a place, an event, a situation absent of how God desires things to be. Famine, debt, oppression, loneliness, despair, death, slaughter--they are all hell on earth. Jesus' desire for his followers is that they live in such a way that they bring heaven to earth. What's disturbing is when people talk more about hell after this life than they do about Hell here and now. As a Christian, I want to do what I can to resist hell coming to earth.

  Rob Bell

  Christian, Jesus, Loneliness

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• When forces of oppression come to maintain themselves in power against established law, peace is considered already broken.

  Che Guevara

  Law, Broken, Force

  Ernesto Guevara, Brian Loveman, Thomas M. Davies (1985). “Guerrilla Warfare”, p.51, Rowman & Littlefield

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• The great masses of men, though theoretically free, are seen to submit supinely to oppression and exploitation of a hundred abhorrent sorts. Have they no means of resistance? Obviously they have. The worst tyrant, even under democratic plutocracy, has but one throat to slit. The moment the majority decided to overthrow him he would be overthrown. But the majority lacks the resolution; it cannot imagine taking the risks.

  H. L. Mencken

  Mean, Men, Tyrants

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Notes On Democracy”, p.41, Knopf

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• Surely nowhere in the world do oppression and persecution based solely on the color of the skin appear more hateful and hideous than in the capital of the United States, because the chasm between the principles upon which this Government was founded, in which it still professes to believe, and those which are daily practiced under the protection of the flag, yawn so wide and deep.

  Mary Church Terrell

  Believe, Color, Government

  What It Means to be Colored in Capital of the U.S., delivered 10 October 1906, United Women's Club, Washington, D.C.

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• Let no man dare, when I am dead. to charge me with dishonor; let no man attaint my memory by believing that I could have engaged in any cause but that of my country's liberty and independence, or that I could have become the pliant minion of power in the oppression or the miseries of my countrymen.

  Robert Emmet

  Country, Memories, Believe

  Charles Phillips, John Philpot Curran, Henry Grattan, Robert Emmet (1834). “Irish Eloquence: The Speeches of the Celebrated Irish Orators: Phillips, Curran and Grattan, to which is Added the Powerful Appeal of Robert Emmett, at the Close of His Trial for High Treason”, p.369

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• Where constraint breaks people, and mediation makes fools of them, the seduction of power is what makes them love their oppression. Because of it, people give up their real riches for a cause that mutilates them; for an appearance that reifies them; for roles that wrest them from authentic life; for a time whose passage defines and confines them.

  Raoul Vaneigem

  Giving Up, Real, People

  Guy Debord, Ivan Chtcheglov, Asger Jorn, Raoul Vaneigem, Mustapha Khayati (2014). “Situationism: A Compendium”, p.179, Bread and Circuses Publishing

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• Nonsense is an assertion of man's spiritual freedom in spite of all the oppressions of circumstance.

  Aldous Huxley

  Spiritual, Freedom, Men

  Aldous Huxley, Robert S. Baker, James Sexton (2000). “Complete Essays: 1920-1925”, Ivan R Dee

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• Education as the exercise of domination stimulates the credulity of students, with the ideological intent (often not perceived by educators) of indoctrinating them to adapt to the world of oppression.

  Paulo Freire

  Exercise, World, Students

  Paulo Freire (2014). “Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition”, p.56, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

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• In order for the oppressed to unite they must first cut the umbilical cord of magic and myth which binds them to the world of oppression; the unity which links them to each other must be of a different nature.

  Paulo Freire

  Cutting, Order, Magic

  Paulo Freire (2014). “Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition”, p.124, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

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• Growth is the surviving influence in all our lives. The tree will send up its trunk in thick profusion from land burned black by atom bombs. Children will grow from poverty and filth and oppression and develop honor, integrity, contribute to all mankind.

  Chester Himes

  Children, Integrity, Land

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• Beware of injustice, for oppression will be darkness on the Day of Resurrection; and beware of stinginess because it doomed those who were before you. It incited them to shed blood and treat the unlawful as lawful.

  Muhammad

  Islamic, Blood, Darkness

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• I am a Black Feminist. I mean I recognize that my power as well as my primary oppressions come as a result of my blackness as well as my womaness, and therefore my struggles on both of these fronts are inseparable.

  Audre Lorde

  Struggle, Mean, Feminist

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