Oppression Quotes - Page 36

• In a world where language and naming are power, silence is oppression, is violence.

  Adrienne Rich

  Silence, World, Violence

  Adrienne Rich (1995). “On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978”, p.113, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Tyranny destroys or strengthens the individual; freedom enervates him, until he becomes no more than a puppet. Man has more chances of saving himself by hell than by paradise.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Men, Saving, Paradise

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• One has personally to come under the shadow of war to feel fully its oppression; but as the years go by it seems now often forgotten that to be caught in youth by 1914 was no less hideous an experience than to be involved in 1939 and the following years. By 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  War, Years, Shadow

  J.R.R. Tolkien (2012). “The Fellowship of the Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings”, p.13, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• We regard this as a continuation of the American policy based on oppression and the shedding of Muslim and Arab blood…We condemn the assassination and the killing of an Arab holy warrior. We ask God to offer him mercy with the true believers and the martyrs.

  Ismail Haniyeh

  Warrior, Blood, Killing

  "Mixed reaction in Mid East". Interview with Anne Barker, www.abc.net.au. May 3, 2011.

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• My idea of philosophy is that if it is not relevant to human problems, if it does not tell us how we can go about eradicating some of the misery in this world, then it is not worth the name of philosophy. I think Socrates made a very profound statement when he asserted that the raison d'etre of philosophy is to teach us proper living. In this day and age 'proper living' means liberation from the urgent problems of poverty, economic necessity and indoctrination, mental oppression.

  Angela Davis

  Philosophy, Mean, Thinking

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• Laughter is something we have against oppression and oppressive people. Dictators hate people who laugh at them. It's easy for them to destroy people who resist them. But if you create jokes against them, write funny poems or articles against them, then they feel helpless and desperate. They can't do anything.

  Burhan Sonmez

  Laughter, Hate, Writing

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I have nothing against the veil. And I think that, wrongly, many in the West look at the veil as a symbol of oppression. Now, as long as a woman chooses to wear the veil, because that's her belief and because of her own - that's a personal relationship with God, so she should be free to dress in whichever way she wants.

  Queen Rania of Jordan

  Thinking, Long, Dresses

  "Queen Rania to Fareed Zakaria:" We need to build channels of communication"". Interview with Fareed Zakaria, www.queenrania.jo. September 01, 2008.

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• The worst way of oppression involve exploitation of children, preying on vulnerability, denying others the right to live safely, and denying people of their right to education. Two-thirds of the world's illiterate are women. Sixty-six percent of countries have no laws to protect women from domestic abuse, and battery is the largest cause of injury to women in America.

  Alice Glass

  Country, Children, People

  Source: pitchfork.com

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• If we are looking for insurance against want and oppression, we will find it only in our neighbors' prosperity and goodwill and, beyond that, in the good health of our worldly places, our homelands. If we were sincerely looking for a place of safety, for real security and success, then we would begin to turn to our communities - and not the communities simply of our human neighbors but also of the water, earth, and air, the plants and animals, all the creatures with whom our local life is shared. (pg. 59, "Racism and the Economy")

  Wendell Berry

  Real, Animal, Air

  Wendell Berry (2010). “The Hidden Wound”, p.129, Counterpoint Press

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• Wealth is attended with power, by which bargains and proceedings, contrary to universal righteousness, are supported; and hence oppression, carried on with worldly policy and order, clothes itself with the name of justice and becomes like a seed of discord in the soul.

  John Woolman

  Order, Names, Clothes

  John Woolman, John Greenleaf Whittier (1871). “The Journal of John Woolman”, p.307, Boston : J.R. Osgood

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• Monetary freedom (gold: sound money), like all other economic freedoms, clears the way for energy, intellect and virtue... Political control weakens individual self-reliance and energy, causes want and poverty and, in the end, breeds tyranny and oppression.

  Hans F. Sennholz

  Self, Political, Gold

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• It is better to resist oppression by violent means than to submit, but it is best of all to resist by nonviolent means.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Mean, Violent, Submit

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• You cannot raise the standard against oppression, or leap into the breach to relieve injustice, and still keep an open mind to every disconcerting fact, or an open ear to the cold voice of doubt. I am satisfied that a scholar who tries to combine these parts sells his birthright for a mess of pottage; that, when the final count is made, it will be found that the impairment of his powers far outweighs any possible contribution to the causes he has espoused.

  Learned Hand

  Voice, Doubt, Mind

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• To me, every dirty act was simply a sacrament of sin, a passionately religious protest against Christianity, which was for me the symbol of all vileness, meanness, treachery, falsehood and oppression.

  Aleister Crowley

  Religious, Dirty, Sin

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• Everything on this earth can be made into something better. Every defeat may be made the foundation of a future victory. Every lost war may be the cause of a later resurgence. Every visitation of distress can give a new impetus to human energy. And out of every oppression those forces can develop which bring about a new rebirth.

  Adolf Hitler

  War, Giving, Victory

  Adolf Hitler (2016). “Mein Kampf: My Struggle: (Vol. I & Vol. II) - (Complete & Illustrated Edition)”, p.320, eKitap Projesi

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• Had courage, wisdom, and reason always prevailed in people, there would not have been oppressions and oppressors.

  Ameen Rihani

  People, Reason, Has Beens

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• Our forefathers would think it's time for a revolution. This is why they revolted in the first place... They revolted against much more mild oppression.

  Ron Paul

  Thinking, Firsts, Revolution

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• Christianity is the enemy of liberty and civilization. It has kept mankind in slavery and oppression. The Church and the State have always fraternally united to exploit the people.

  August Bebel

  Civilization, People, Enemy

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• Oppression tries to defend itself by its utility. But we have seen that it is one of the lies of the serious mind to attempt to give the word "useful" an absolute meaning; nothing is useful if it is not useful to man; nothing is useful to man if the latter is not in a position to define his own ends and values, if he is not free.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Lying, Men, Giving

  Simone de Beauvoir (2011). “The Ethics of Ambiguity”, p.47, Open Road Media

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• Humiliation and mental oppression by ignorant and selfish teachers wreak havoc in the youthful mind that can never be undone and often exert a baleful influence in later life.

  Albert Einstein

  Teacher, Selfish, Ignorant

  Albert Einstein (2011). “Out of My Later Years: The Scientist, Philosopher, and Man Portrayed Through His Own Words”, p.106, Open Road Media

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• The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war. We do not want a war. We do not now expect a war. This generation of Americans has already had enough - more than enough - of war and hate and oppression. We shall be prepared if others wish it. We shall be alert to try to stop it. But we shall also do our part to build a world of peace where the weak are safe and the strong are just. We are not helpless before that task or hopeless of its success. Confident and unafraid, we labor on - not toward a strategy of annihilation but toward a strategy of peace.

  John F. Kennedy

  Strong, Hate, War

  American University Commencement Address, delivered 10 June 1963

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• Puerto Ricans are Americans. We've been American citizens since 1917. We fought the same battles, made the same sacrifices. We've lost our land in the same way that Native Americans lost their land, and we've been the subject of discrimination and racism in the same way that African Americans have. We've suffered the full spectrum of oppression, and yet we've been off the map 4,000 miles away so we haven't even been able to argue our case.

  Nelson Antonio Denis

  Native American, Sacrifice, Land

  "The Lost History of Puerto Rico’s Independence Movement". Interview with AJ Vicens, www.motherjones.com. April 21, 2015.

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• Sometimes their oppression of emotion and the weird way it comes out is more interesting than painting it in bold primary colors.

  Edward Norton

  Color, Interesting, Way

  Interview with Scott Tobias, film.avclub.com. January 3, 2007.

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• By Oppression's woes and pains! By your sons in servile chains! We will drain our dearest veins, But they shall be free! Lay the proud usurpers low! Tyrants fall in every foe! Liberty's in every blow! Let us do or die!

  Robert Burns

  Pain, Fall, Son

  'Robert Bruce's March to Bannockburn' (1799)

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• Want to talk third-wave feminism, you could cite Ariel Levy and the idea that women have internalized male oppression. Going to spring break at Fort Lauderdale, getting drunk, and flashing your breasts isn't an act of personal empowerment. It's you, so fashioned and programmed by the construct of patriarchal society that you no longer know what's best for yourself. A damsel too dumb to even know she's in distress.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Spring, Ideas, Drunk

  "Snuff". Book by Chuck Palahniuk, www.sfgate.com. 2008.

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