Oppression Quotes - Page 23

• Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: first, a right to life; second, to liberty; third, to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can. These are evident branches of ... the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of nature. All men have a right to remain in a state of nature as long as they please; and in case of intolerable oppression, civil or religious, to leave the society they belong to, and ernter into another.... Now what liberty can there be where property is taken away without consent?

  Samuel Adams

  Religious, Taken, Men

  "The Rights of the Colonists". The Report of the Committee of Correspondence to the Boston Town Meeting, history.hanover.edu. November 20, 1772.

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  Liberty is not less a blessing, because oppression has so long darkened the mind that it can not appreciate it.

  Lucretia Mott

  Blessing, Long, Appreciate

  Lucretia Mott (1850). “Discourse on Woman”, p.14

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• When you finally embrace the gift of your sexual orientation it IS the end; the end of shame, fear and oppression. You leave the darkness of the closet and begin a life of honesty, authenticity and freedom.

  Anthony Venn-Brown

  Honesty, Gay, Darkness

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• The Church is a terrible engine of oppression, especially as concerns woman

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton

  Church, Terrible, Concern

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Harriot (Stanton). Blatch (Mrs) (1922). “Elizabeth Cady Stanton as revealed in her letters, diary and reminiscences”

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• If we even tolerate any oppression of gay and lesbian Americans, if we join those who would intrude upon the choices of our hearts, then who among us shall be free?

  June Jordan

  Heart, Gay, Justice

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• A status not freely chosen or entered into by an individual or a group is necessarily one of oppression and the oppressed are by their nature (i.e., oppressed) forever in ferment and agitation against their condition and what they understand to be their oppressors. If not by overt rebellion or revolution, then in the thousand and one ways they will devise with and without consciousness to alter their condition

  Lorraine Hansberry

  Forever, Agitation, Groups

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• One law for the lion and ox is oppression.

  William Blake

  Government, Law, Lions

  "William Blake: Selected Poetry and Prose".

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• People who have been wronged will attempt to right the wrong; they would not be people if they didn't. They can rarely afford to be scrupulous about the means they will use. They will use such means as come to hand. Neither, in the main, will they distinguish one oppressor from another, nor see through to the root principle of their oppression.

  James A. Baldwin

  Mean, Hands, Roots

  "Negroes Are Anti-Semitic Because They're Anti-White" by James A. Baldwin, archive.nytimes.com. April 9, 1967.

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• I think the world of 'District 9' has a lot of race and oppression-based ideas that I would still like to explore in that world.

  Neill Blomkamp

  Thinking, Race, Ideas

  "Elysium' Interview: Neill Blomkamp's Team On Creating A New Sci-Fi World". Interview with Todd Gilchrist, screencrush.com. April 10, 2013.

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• In our current society, it is considered a weakness to be female and a treason to protest this. Highlighting inequality results in aggressive insults and threats, all of which are propped up by the repeated narrative now that women are 'playing the gender card'. And this is the final insult. That of all the unfair things associated with women - the violence and insults, the financial oppression, the very undermining of our worth as human beings - it is the acknowledgement of these inequalities that gives us some kind of unfair advantage over the men who benefit from them.

  Clementine Ford

  Women, Giving, Benefits

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• Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who feels what is happening. Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand.

  Simone Weil

  Crush, Sides, Made

  Simone Weil (1978). “Lectures on Philosophy”, p.139, Cambridge University Press

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• O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose, not only the tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia, and Africa, have long expelled her. Europe regards her like a stranger, and England hath given her warning to depart. O! receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind.

  Thomas Paine

  Love, Tyrants, Europe

  Thomas Paine (2015). “Common Sense: and The American Crisis I”, p.32, Penguin

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• We understand it still that there is no easy road to freedom. We know it well that none of us acting alone can achieve success. We must therefore act together as a united people, for national reconciliation, for nation building, for the birth of a new world. Let there be justice for all. Let there be peace for all. Let there be work, bread, water and salt for all. Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another and suffer the indignity of being the skunk of the world. Let freedom reign.

  Nelson Mandela

  Beautiful, Land, Justice For All

  Presidential Inaugural Speech, delivered 10 May 1994, Pretoria, South Africa

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• No free people ever existed, or can ever exist, without keeping the purse strings in their own hands. Where this is the case, they have a constitutional check upon the administration, which may thereby by brought into order without violence. But when such a power is not lodged in the people, oppression proceeds uncontrolled in its career, till the governed, transported into rage, seek redress in the midst of blood and confusion.

  John Dickinson

  Order, Careers, Blood

  John Dickinson (2009). “The Writings of John Dickinson”, p.364, Applewood Books

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• Speak against unconscious oppression, Speak against the tyranny of the unimaginative, Speak against bonds.

  Ezra Pound

  Speak, Tyranny, Unconscious

  Ezra Pound (2015). “Delphi Poetical Works of Ezra Pound (Illustrated)”, p.433, Delphi Classics

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• The great religious ages were notable for their indifference to human rights... not only for acquiescence in poverty, inequality, exploitation and oppression, but also for enthusiastic justifications for slavery, persecution, abandonment of small children, torture, and genocide... Moreover, religion enshrined hierarchy, authority, and inequality... It was the age of equality that brought about the disappearance of such religious appurtenances as the auto-da-fe and burning at the stake.

  Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

  Religious, Children, Rights

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• Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression.

  James Madison

  Real, Lying, Government Lies

  James Madison, Ralph Ketcham “Selected Writings of James Madison”, Hackett Publishing

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• People should decide on the books' meanings for themselves. They'll find a story that attacks such things as cruelty, oppression, intolerance, unkindness, narrow-mindedness, and celebrates love, kindness, open-mindedness, tolerance, curiosity, human intelligence.

  Philip Pullman

  Kindness, Book, People

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• Thus the right of nullification meant by Mr. Jefferson is the natural right, which all admit to be a remedy against insupportable oppression.

  James Madison

  Nullification, Natural, Remedy

  James Madison (1867). “1829-1836”, p.410

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• All men have a right to remain in a state of nature as long as they please; and in case of intolerable oppression, civil or religious, to leave the society they belong to, and enter into another.

  Samuel Adams

  Religious, Men, Long

  "The Rights of the Colonists". The Report of the Committee of Correspondence to the Boston Town Meeting, November 20, 1772.

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• The history of woman is the history of the continued and universal oppression of one sex by the other. The emancipation of woman is her restoration to equal rights and privileges with man.... Need we wonder, then, at the sad spectacle which humanity offers us? Its hideous wars, its social abominations, its foul creeds, its treacheries, vices, wants, diseases, lusts, tyrannies, and crimes are the natural outcome of the subjugation of one half of the human race by the other.

  Tennessee Celeste Claflin

  Sex, War, Men

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• What you must understand is oppression does not end with the niggers. It does not end with the poor people, it doesn't end with the women, or the pregnant women. It goes on up the line to the executive who has his bag searched in the airport.

  Florynce Kennedy

  Airports, People, Doe

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• Legality and oppression are not unknown to run hand in hand.

  Tim Hawkins

  Running, Hands, Law

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• The Christians committed all sorts of atrocities on the Jews by giving them the label "Killers of Christ". Hitler is not an exception but a culmination of the 2000-year long oppression of the Jews by the Christians

  M. S. Golwalkar

  Christian, Years, Long

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• The Gringo, locked into the fiction of white superiority, seized complete political power, stripping Indians and Mexicans of their land while their feet were still rooted in it. Con el destierro y el exilo fuimos desuñados, destroncados, destripados - we were jerked out by the roots, truncated, disemboweled, dispossessed, and separated from our identity and our history.

  Gloria E. Anzaldúa

  Land, Roots, White

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