Oppression Quotes - Page 29

• I am a feminist. I'm trying to show the relationships between men and women, always the structural relations, not individual villains. I'd never make a husband a villain. I try very hard in my work not to - because if I made one man a villain, the rest would be off the hook. I'm interested in the system of oppression.

  Alix Kates Shulman

  Husband, Men, Feminist

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• Was not necessity the plea of every illegal exertion of power or exercise of oppression?...Necessity is the plea for very infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.

  William Pitt

  Exercise, Tyrants, Slavery

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• If I rule out violent anarchism, there remains pacifist, anti-nationalist, anti-capitalist, moral, and anti-democratic anarchism (i.e., that which is hostile to the falsified democracy of bourgeois states). There remains the anarchism which acts by means of persuasion, by the creation of small groups and networks, denouncing falsehood and oppression, aiming at a true overturning of authorities of all kinds as people at the bottom speak and organize themselves.

  Jacques Ellul

  Mean, People, Democracy

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• Usually, when people talk about the "strength" of black women . . . . they ignore the reality that to be strong in the face of oppression is not the same as overcoming oppression, that endurance is not to be confused with transformation.

  Bell Hooks

  Strong, Confused, Reality

  bell hooks (2014). “Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism”, p.6, Routledge

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• In order to achieve that end goal of equality it is a very gendered oppression primarily affecting women that needs to be tackled.

  Laura Bates

  Order, Goal, Needs

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• Wilberforce and the band of abolitionists knew that a private faith that did not act in the face of oppression was no faith at all.

  Charles Colson

  Band, Faces, Wilberforce

  Charles W. Colson (2010). “God and Government: An Insider's View on the Boundaries between Faith and Politics”, p.113, Harper Collins

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• To take on the question of race in America and believe that you could transform this country so that it would actually be a place that was welcoming for everyone that was here, including dealing with the history of slavery and the kind of oppression this country is based on, that's an amazing moment to begin to find your own political ideals.

  Amber Hollibaugh

  Country, Believe, Race

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• The Islamic world is suffering not only because of external oppression but also because of the loss of its own dignity, of its own heritage, of its own practice of Islam, of its weakening of its own ethics, and many things which are internal to Islam not just external.

  Seyyed Hossein Nasr

  Islamic, Loss, Practice

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• The very essence of the Sufi spiritual tradition requires you to purify your heart, to liberate yourself from your ego and to be courageous in facing any corrupt power, injustice and oppression. Unfortunately, colonial powers pushed an agenda by using Sufism against resistance, and some ulama played that game in the past and in the present.

  Tariq Ramadan

  Spiritual, Heart, Past

  "Tariq Ramadan: My Absence Would Certainly Be The Most Powerful Speech I Have Ever Given At ISNA". The Islamic Monthly Interview, www.theislamicmonthly.com. August 14, 2014.

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• We know what totalitarian looks like, we know what oppression looks like, we know what the dumb culture of totalitarianism smells like. This is it! It's happening now, and the future of the world is being decided. So, get out there, make your own sites, take action!

  Alex Jones

  Smell, Dumb, Culture

  Source: noworldorder.com

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• Everybody knows there is no fineness or accuracy of suppression; if you hold down one thing, you hold down the adjoining.

  Saul Bellow

  Accuracy, Suppression, Ifs

  The Adventures of Augie March ch. 1 (1953)

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• You know, it's not the world that was my oppressor, because what the world does to you, if the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough, you begin to do to yourself.

  James A. Baldwin

  Long, Doe, World

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• Certain rich men, whose lives are evil and corrupt, are the representatives of predatory wealth accumulated by all forms of inequity, from the oppression of wage workers to unfair methods of crushing out competition.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Crush, Men, Evil

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• The power of the voice in rap is about the expression of truth, rather than the expression of some kind of artifice. Landays, they're about love and pleasure and oppression and levels of oppression within a family. And because of that, I think rap music is probably closely related.

  Eliza Griswold

  Rap, Thinking, Kind

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• The object of terrorism is terrorism. The object of oppression is oppression. The object of torture is torture. The object of murder is murder. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?

  George Orwell

  Murder, Terrorism, Torture

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• To embrace the ideas of Malcolm X is to embrace the ideas of African Internationalism and the ideas of African Internationalism are opposite and contradictory to the ideals of Americanism. The ideals of African Internationalism promote freedom from oppression and injustice. These ideals promote freedom and independence.

  Omali Yeshitela

  Opposites, Ideas, Independence

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• My political tradition is on the left, but I think that more modern leftists, they sometimes get stuck with this vision of large government and social benefits and everything and that's against what is my position, because I think that the ultimate vision of Marx, Engels, and those people was to eliminate government entities and to give as much power to the people. And in modern standing that means direct democracy, that means all the power to the communities, it means gradually eliminating all government oppression on the society. And 100 years ago, leftists' major allies were labor unions.

  Ilya Ponomarev

  Mean, Thinking, People

  Source: www.businessinsider.com

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• It never occurred to him to be spiritually won over to the enemy. Many moderns, inured to a weak worship of intellect and force, might have wavered in their allegiance under this oppression of a great personality. . . . But this was a kind of modern meanness to which Syme could not sink even in his extreme morbidity. Like any man, he was coward enough to fear great force; but he was not coward enough to admire it.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Personality, Enemy

  "The Man Who Was Thursday". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, Ch. VI : The Exposure, 1908.

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• For Beirut it was the civil war, and the dividing of the city - which is something that is shared among Beirut, Berlin and Baghdad. And Cairo is a city that has a scar that was born after many decades of dictatorship - oppression shaped the people's lives, and forced people to grow up accompanied by fear. I belong to a generation that, whether we like it or not, was shaped by this fear of death or loosing the people you love, the threat of war, not allowed to be yourself, forced to be silent - as you watch ignorance occupying everything around you. And this is a deep scar.

  Tamer El Said

  Being Yourself, Growing Up, War

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Before she is an individual, a shaman is foremost a vehicle for receiving and expressing the grief and indignation of the people within society. The otherworldly strength that you see during a gut is the raging effort to forget and overcome the weakness of the self and is possible because it bears all the wrath and indignation of the people against oppression. Extraordinary acts performed with remarkable exaggeration encounter the human instinct to demolish one's own limitations, producing catharsis.

  Hyon Gyon

  Grief, People, Effort

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I want to incite people to loosen their oppression by giving them something to work with, to build on. They shouldn't be frightened of creating themselves - that's why I make things very open, with things for people to do.

  Yoko Ono

  Creating, People, Giving

  "The Lost John Lennon Interview". Interview with Tariq Ali and Robin Blackburn, www.counterpunch.org. December 8, 2005.

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• "Oppression" or "systems of oppression" operate as a shorthand terms in much writing and speaking so that we do not have to list all these systems of meaning and control each time (i.e. racism, ableism, xenophobia, etc.). I needed a term like that, but "oppression" implies a kind of top-down understanding of power that is at odds with the Foucaultian model I rely on in my work.

  Dean Spade

  Xenophobia, Writing, Top Down

  "On Normal Life". Interview with Natalie Oswin, societyandspace.org. January 15, 2014.

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• The Greeks by their laws, and the Romans by the spirit of their people, took care to put into the hands of their rulers no such engine of oppression as a standing army. Their system was to make every man a soldier, and oblige him to repair to the standard of his country whenever that was reared. This made them invincible; and the same remedy will make us so.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Death, Country, Military

  Thomas Jefferson, Joyce Appleby, Terence Ball (1999). “Jefferson: Political Writings”, p.139, Cambridge University Press

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• What is surprising is not that oppression should make its appearance only after higher forms of economy have been reached, but that it should always accompany them.

  Simone Weil

  Appearance, Economics, Economy

  Simone Weil (2013). “Oppression and Liberty”, p.59, Routledge

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• History affords us many instances of the ruin of states,
  by the prosecution of measures ill suited to the temper and
  genius of their people. The ordaining of laws in favor of one
  part of the nation, to the prejudice and oppression of another, is certainly the most erroneous and mistaken policy. ... These measures never fail to create great and violent jealousies and animosities between the people favored and the people oppressed; whence a total separation of affections, interests, political obligations, and all manner of connections, by which the whole state is weakened.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Law, People, Political

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