Quotes & Sayings About Disenfranchised

Social change rarely comes about through the efforts of the disenfranchised. The middle class creates social revolutions. — Faye Wattleton

The only thing they have to look forward to is hope. And you have to give them hope. Hope for a better world, hope for a better tomorrow, hope for a better place to come to if the pressures at home are too great. Hope that all will be all right. Without hope, not only gays, but the blacks, the seniors, the handicapped, the us'es, the us'es will give up. And if you help elect to the central committee and other offices, more gay people, that gives a green light to all who feel disenfranchised, a green light to move forward. It means hope to a nation that has given up, because if a gay person makes it, the doors are open to everyone.
So if there is a message I have to give, it is that if I've found one overriding thing about my personal election, it's the fact that if a gay person can be elected, it's a green light. And you and you and you, you have to give people hope ... — Harvey Milk

When a female character sets herself on fire in an effort to interrupt her culture's violent abuse of disenfranchised people, or physically tortures and punishes her guardian rapist, or picks up a gun and fights back in ways that make her not pretty, or aggressively rejects her role as the object of desire, or even when she waddles off into the woods to squat and have a baby without the safety and expertise of hospitals and doctors, these are the kinds of violences and stories we can learn from. — Lidia Yuknavitch

This is how religions shore up dictators; by encircling them with words of power, words which the people are reluctant to see discredited, disenfranchised, mocked. — Salman Rushdie

I think sometimes in life we want to ignore the problems of society and just think about the good. I believe in positive thinking and affirmative living, I also think it's really important to remember all of our disenfranchised members of society. — Kerry Washington

I usually play disenfranchised youth. — Robin Tunney

When it gets complicated, that's usually because the world is complicated - or because we're complicated. When we shy away from it because it seems too difficult (or because we've been taught so poorly), we surrender the ability to take charge of our future. We are disenfranchised. Our self-confidence erodes. — Carl Sagan

Part of the reason why people get radicalized is because they feel they are disenfranchised; that they not there; that they are bullied. But if they are represented, they can't go and say to themselves: 'Oh, this society hates us!' — Bassem Youssef

The secular world often finds its constituents disenfranchised and solitary as it has spent a great deal of time debating the religious community while failing to build a true community of its own. — Chris Matakas

I'm trying to appeal to the disenfranchised everybody, not just specifically gay. — Sandra Bernhard

I'm a big fan of Barack Obama. I think he carries a heavier burden and is held to a greater and higher standard than other candidates : I think there's a large, large portion of this country that feels disenfranchised and marginalized by the political process. — Chris Carter

If you don't take care of the disenfranchised and outcasts of your city, they will come knocking on your door one day with revenge and bitterness — Sunday Adelaja

this integration of Jefferson and Jesus is in many ways how members of the evangelical right can oppose abortion yet ignore the needs of disenfranchised members of society, how they can rage against sexual revolutions and offer little critique on economic greed or mass consumption, and how they can keep labor unions and government in check while not doing the same to Wall Street, insurance companies, and other big American businesses. Of course, much of today's evangelical political doctrine has become so radical, so driven by fear and hyperbole that it's more or less a parody of the doctrines of Thomas Jefferson and Jesus, a culture where the poor in spirit are not blessed, they are marginalized and expected to care for themselves. — Matthew Paul Turner

With the exception of Leviticus and Numbers, written by the priestly classes, most of the Bible is written by or about people who are occupied, enslaved, poor or disenfranchised in some way! — Richard Rohr

By now, they rank people by income level or wages roughly the same: The bottom seventy per cent or so are virtually disenfranchised; they have almost no influence on policy, and as you move up the scale you get more influence. At the very top, you basically run the show. — Noam Chomsky

I'm a white, middle-aged, married, middle-class male with kids. I couldn't be disenfranchised if I tried. — Nick Harkaway

(Charles Morgan, Jr., Southern Director of the ACLU in 1966, upon seeing conditions in the Jefferson County jail):

...I knew that [Southern whites] would have annihilated blacks had they been more literate and less useful. In Hitler's Germany armbands identified Jews. Those with black skin could have been annihilated more easily. But they were the labor pool with which to break strikes. They served as the pickers of cotton, the diggers of ditches. They emptied bedpans and cleaned the outhouses of our lives. Uneducated, property-less, disenfranchised, and excluded from justice, except as defendants, they were no threat to whites. While they remained useful and didn't get 'out of line,' their lives were assured, for no matter how worthless lower-class white folks said blacks were, the rich, well born, and able upper-class whites knew that they and black folks were really the only people indispensably required by Our Southern Way of Life. (188) — Wayne Greenhaw

People that are much younger in areas that are much more, kind of, disenfranchised, I guess, as far as the gay movement goes, they still have a language that they've discovered around things. And they have a vocabulary to use, and they have a way to express themselves even when they're not accepted. — Amy Ray

Inequality causes problems by creating fissures in societies, leaving those at the bottom feeling marginalized or disenfranchised. — Nicholas Kristof

In my lifetime I have seen democracy begin to expand, not only to include those who have been excluded, but to provide a listening arena, a vocabulary, an intelligent reception for stories that have been buried. Not just stories of the disenfranchised and the marginalized, but marginalized and disenfranchised histories even in the lives of the accepted and the privileged. — Susan Griffin

None of this seems to affect the leadership, that people don't go out to vote, that they don't feel the need to go vote, that they already feel disenfranchised. It's not just Obama's fault or Clinton's or whomever's, it's all of them, the whole collection of clowns I've had to sit through. — Lewis Black

We have fought hard and long for integration, as I believe we should have, and I know that we will win. But I've come to believe we're integrating into a burning house.
I'm afraid that America may be losing what moral vision she may have had ... . And I'm afraid that even as we integrate, we are walking into a place that does not understand that this nation needs to be deeply concerned with the plight of the poor and disenfranchised. Until we commit ourselves to ensuring that the underclass is given justice and opportunity, we will continue to perpetuate the anger and violence that tears at the soul of this nation. — Martin Luther King Jr.

The disenfranchised offspring, along with an entire ageless class of human discards, know only that they are doomed. They are drawn to spikes and pentagrams, gasoline, guitars screaming like whips, MIDI-programmed Thanatos, with sufficient amplitude to occupy that hollow space where consciousness once resided. These Dionysians obliterate themselves by removing filters, ultimately becoming insensate with sensation. This mode of behaviour originates in the superstitious belief that transcendence is acquired in the precise ratio by which reason is destroyed. — Adam Parfrey

We know, for instance, that Americans have forcefully resisted extending the right to vote; those in power have disenfranchised blacks, women, and the poor in myriad ways. We know, too, that women historically have had fewer civil protections than corporations. Instead of a thoroughgoing democracy, Americans have settled for democratic stagecraft: high-sounding rhetoric, magnified, and political leaders dressing down at barbecues or heading out to hunt game. — Nancy Isenberg

Politically active people felt more and more disenfranchised, particularly during the ultra-New Labour years. — Jeremy Corbyn

Even though the money is great and the fame is great, you still have a lot of disenfranchised young men that are participating in the NFL that are not very happy. A lot of them are very bitter. A lot them are very angry. So many of them have had no fathers and no home life, and basically, no education. — Jim Brown

There have been more people disenfranchised in Washington than there have been in Kuwait. — Jesse Jackson

Only the disenfranchised can party with abandon. — Douglas Coupland

We've got to understand that all disenfranchised people have something in common ... The pursuit of justice really is about equality for everyone. — Anita Hill

People can talk about punk all they want, but after new wave put that down, metal is the voice of the disenfranchised and that need to become unhinged. That's why it appeals to so many people when they are younger and carries over when those people, at 40, don't want to grow up. — Corey Taylor

For some reason, voters can be brainwashed, and they vote sometimes against their own best interests, let alone voting against the interests of people who need them, like people who are disenfranchised and people who are poor and so forth. — Joyce Carol Oates

Human beings are themselves considered consumer goods to be used and then discarded. We have created a "disposable" culture which is now spreading. It is no longer simply about exploitation and oppression, but something new. Exclusion ultimately has to do with what it means to be a part of the society in which we live; those excluded are no longer society's underside or its fringes or its disenfranchised - they are no longer even a part of it. The excluded are not the "exploited" but the outcast, the "leftovers". — Pope Francis

We are at a turning point; the exploitation has now reached a pitch where the disenfranchised and exploited can look to a culpable minority with vengeful eyes. This minority, though, cannot be defined by the color of their skin but by the color of their god. Green. — Russell Brand

If companies can refuse to provide coverage for women, what other objections to the Affordable Care Act will we see based on 'religious grounds'? For that matter, will 'religious freedom' be used as an excuse to discriminate against other minorities and disenfranchised groups across the board? Where will it end? — Al Sharpton

Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourses of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness. — Helen Keller

If anything, I feel a bit of pressure to write about less disenfranchised people, because I'd probably sell more books that way and would've already had some hot property that I could've sold to Hollywood. — Adrian Tomine

I said once that lies have no rights against truth. I was wrong. In daily life, it's the truth that's disenfranchised. What fits the popular narrative, what makes an observer happy with the consistency of events, is what is believed. — Adrian Lamo

If you are a Scot living outside of Scotland but still in the UK, you are not allowed to vote in the referendum. This leaves over a million of loyal, proud Scots disenfranchised. It gives me the rage. — Damian Barr

Worse, the bodies of women, minorities, children, disenfranchised bodies (prisoners, so-called nut cases, etc ... ) and their truths don't "count" as either present and important in society or worth Pulitzer prizes as characters in literature. — Lidia Yuknavitch

But it's not so much a headache as possession, my head an occupied territory, and my normal self, a disenfranchised native populace, driven underground. — Andrew Levy

The rage bubbling up from our impoverished and disenfranchised working class presages a looming and dangerous right-wing backlash. I spent two years traveling the country to write a book on the Christian Right called American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. I visited former manufacturing towns where for many the end of the world is no longer an abstraction. They have lost hope. Fear and instability have plunged the working classes into profound personal and economic despair, and, not surprisingly, into the arms of the demagogues and charlatans of the radical Christian Right who offer a belief in magic, miracles, and the fiction of a utopian Christian nation. And unless we rapidly re-enfranchise our dispossessed workers into the economy, unless we give them hope, our democracy is doomed. — Chris Hedges

The disenfranchised should be going to art school - not the franchised. — Gary Hume

The Obama administration has a strange theory. Terrorism is a response of uneducated human beings who have been disenfranchised politically and economically. If we can solve the 'root grievances' of the poor and oppressed around the world, there will be no more terrorists, and Americans will be safe. This view is of course absurd. If poverty, lack of education, and political disenfranchisement were the causes of terrorism, then much of India and most of China would be populated by terrorists. But they are not. And this is because terrorism is the violent expression of ideology, not objective conditions - what has famously been called 'propaganda of the deed.' The terrorist's ideology may be secular and political - communist or fascist, for example - or it may be religious - Christian, Islamic, or even Hindu. — Sebastian Gorka

... I think that childfree by choice is the new gay. We're the new disenfranchised group. People think we're irresponsible, immoral sluts and that our lifestyle is up for debate. — Jen Kirkman

I get so disenfranchised reading the news, because global borders and lines we've created are completely unnecessary. That's just another person on the other side, and it's his bad luck that he was born there and it's my good fortune that I was born here. It's all kind of illogical. — Eddie Huang

People who are disenfranchised politically and people who are poor often don't vote. They often don't elect politicians, so the politicians who are supporting them are really being very charitable, because they're not going to give them billions of dollars in campaign funds. — Joyce Carol Oates

Every man needs slaves like he needs clean air. To rule is to breathe, is it not? And even the most disenfranchised get to breathe. The lowest on the social scale have their spouses or their children. — Albert Camus

The real damper on employee engagement is the soggy, cold blanket of centralized authority. In most companies, power cascades downwards from the CEO. Not only are employees disenfranchised from most policy decisions, they lack even the power to rebel against egocentric and tyrannical supervisors. — Gary Hamel

If you double count some votes, that makes other votes disenfranchised. — John Ensign

If the basic structure of Grameen is changed, the worry is that the poor women who are the rightful owners of the bank will be disenfranchised. — Muhammad Yunus

Iraqi national identity under Saddam Hussein never truly incorporated Shiites or Kurds. Sunnis, who identified most closely with the Iraqi nation, remain in some ways disenfranchised relative to the other groups, or at least they perceive themselves that way. — Noah Feldman

Take responsibility for the disenfranchised people — Sunday Adelaja

Engaged Audience Members are receptive to the messages of dangerous speech and to condoning group-targeted harm, but are not hardliners. For example, they may be easily influenced by charismatic leaders who promise to resolve their grievances, or be receptive to blame narratives. This could be any member of society, but certain types of people (based on demographic or other characteristics) may be disproportionately engaged. — Rachel Hilary Brown

My go-to gifts are scarves from my friend Matin Maulawizada's nonprofit organization, Afghan Hands, which supports disenfranchised women in Afghanistan. In exchange for their beautiful embroidery, the women are given financial aid and classes in math and literacy. The scarves are all stunning and one of a kind. — Claire Danes

Black folks in America are telling one party, 'We don't give a damn about you.' They're telling the other party, 'You've got our vote.' Therefore, you have labeled yourself 'disenfranchised' because one party knows they've got you under their thumb. The other party knows they'll never get you and nobody comes to address your interest, — Stephen A. Smith

You don't have a very motivated working class, it starts to affect the dynamics of the economy. If workers are disenchanted and disenfranchised, productivity losses will go along with that. — James Sinegal

Zarathustra: Do you have words? Do your words belong to you?
Giannina: No, my answer is no. I have no property in the dictionary. Words are anonymous like the disenfranchised masses that haven't been weighed - or named - or framed. My words belong to those who don't belong. — Giannina Braschi

The whiteness celebrated in Paris is Burning is not just any old brand of whiteness but rather that brutal imperial ruling-class capitalist patriarchal whiteness that presents itself -its way of life- as the only meaningful life there is. What could be more reassuring to a white public fearful that marginalized disenfranchised black folks might rise any day now make revolutionary black liberation struggle a reality than a documentary affirming that colonized, victimized, exploited black folks, are all too willing to be complicit in perpetuating the fantasy that ruling-class white culture is the quintessential site of unrestricted joy, freedom, power and pleasure. — Bell Hooks

Because having your story told, as a woman, as a person of color, as a lesbian or as a trans person, or as any member of any disenfranchised community ... is sadly often still a radical idea. There is so much power in storytelling and there is enormous power in inclusive storytelling and inclusive representations . — Kerry Washington

Most of us would agree that the important thing about Jesus is not his supposed miraculous birth or the claim that he was resurrected from death, but rather how he lived. The power of his love, the penetrating simplicity of his teachings, and the force of his example of service on behalf of the disenfranchised and downtrodden are what is crucial. — Forrest Church

For years, Lebanese have known that Palestinian camps like Nahr al-Barid and Ain al-Helwe - hopeless slums crowded with generations of disenfranchised Palestinian refugees who can't go home because of Israel, and can't work because of Lebanese laws - are awash with gunmen, criminals and, since the war in Iraq, al-Qaida inspired jihadists. — Richard Engel

As a child that was disenfranchised from everything, and that was in a world that was the wrong size, run by the wrong people, the wrong morale and the wrong rules, I felt completely outside of that, and I wanted some measure of control, and the measure of control I found was through fear. — Guillermo Del Toro

Small loans can transform lives, especially the lives of women and children. The poor can become empowered instead of disenfranchised. Homes can be built, jobs can be created, businesses can be launched, and individuals can feel a sense of worth again. — Natalie Portman

We should figure out how to do this so that some parents don't feel disenfranchised, angry and upset. It says a lot about the state of where we are in the city, the role of parents and the reality of small school and combining schools. — Lisa Randall

Perhaps some day men will raise a tablet reading in letters of gold: 'All honor to women, the first disenfranchised class in history who, unaided by any political party, won enfranchisement by its own effort ... and achieved the victory without the shedding of a drop of human blood. All honor to women of the world! — Harriot Eaton Stanton Blatch

Being disenfranchised is so damn tedious. — Pierce Brown

You just pick up any paper, and it's always talking about, how are we going to overthrow Donald Trump? I'm representing a tremendous - I'm representing millions of people that have - really feel angry and disenfranchised. And these are great people. And they like me and I love them. And I'll tell you what. We're not being treated right. — Donald Trump

Making information free is survivable so long as only limited numbers of people are disenfranchised. As much as it pains me to say so, we can survive if we only destroy the middle classes of musicians, journalists, and photographers. What is not survivable is the additional destruction of the middle classes in transportation, manufacturing, energy, office work, education, and health care. And all that destruction will come surely enough if the dominant idea of an information economy isn't improved. — Jaron Lanier

Do you really think that Walter has a chance of becoming president in two years?"
"Yes, I do. I believe that, in the next few years, we are likely to experience a war between a large population of disenfranchised, jobless, Western Caucasian men and everyone else. The status quo is being disrupted, and they don't like it. Don't expect them to give up power willingly. The forces you challenge are dangerous and don't play fair or clean. — Jamie Le Fay

You see people who are disenfranchised elsewhere coming to Comic Con and making lifetime friends. I love seeing the outcasts of society all bonding together. — Scott Aukerman

He thought of Jesus as a great teacher, a rebel who refused to see the poor and disenfranchised mistreated. — Alice Hoffman

The minimum wage is the black teenage unemployment act. It is the guaranteed way of holding the poor, the minorities and the disenfranchised out of the mainstream is if you price their original services too high. — Arthur Laffer

I want to think I deserve what I get. I don't want to consider how vastly I am overly rewarded. I don't want to consider the injustices around me. I don't want any encounters with the disenfranchised. I want to say it's not my fault. But it is, it's yours and mine, and ours. We'd better figure out ways to spread some equity around if we want to go on living in a society that is at least semi-functional. It's a fundamental responsibility, to ourselves. — William Kittredge

Can you see the pictures before you on how to intervene on behalf of the oppressed? Are you thinking of what to do to the disenfranchised of your society? Do you notice the abused of your society? Can you see the afflicted that are crying for that justice every day? What of those who are been maltreated on daily basis, do you think they need that justice? Did you see any of those who are downtrodden, would that justice help them? Anyone oppressed and suppressed around you, can you serve them justice? — Sunday Adelaja