Oppressing Quotes & Sayings

Everyone has a spectrum of masculinity and femininity inside them. In every individual, a war of misogyny is raging. Every man is repressing and oppressing the femininity within themselves, raising up male values as governing values. Because that's what we've been taught to do, just as every woman has. Misogyny isn't just something that affects women. It affects men. — Antony Hegarty

This country had originally been born through many races working together. As a result, a member of the race with the largest population, a human, became the king, but in order to protect the rights of the other races, the commanders of the army, navy, and air force would be chosen from the other races.

So, if a tyrant took the throne and began oppressing the other races, the system had been set up so that the armies of the Three Dukedoms, being larger than the Forbidden Army, could remove him. Turning that around, if one of the Three Dukedoms was plotting to usurp the throne, the system was set up in a way that if even one of the armies were to side with the king, the rebellion could be put down. — Dojyomaru

Imperialism will not last long because it always does evil things. It persists in grooming and supporting reactionaries in all countries who are against the people, it has forcibly seized many colonies and semi-colonies and many military bases, and it threatens the peace with atomic war. Thus, forced by imperialism to do so, more than 90 per cent of the people of the world are rising or will rise in struggle against it. Yet, imperialism is still alive, still running amuck in Asia, Africa and Latin America. In the West imperialism is still oppressing the people at home. This situation must change. It is the task of the people of the whole world to put an end to the aggression and oppression perpetrated by imperialism, and chiefly by U.S. imperialism. — Mao Zedong

We need a legal code that develops like our skin during our growing years. Something both youthful and strong ... So what we humans birth might surpass without oppressing us. — Odysseas Elytis

Ironically, even as Khomeini empowered some women, he also found ways of oppressing their entire gender. The regime replaced the shah's secular law with an Islamic law, which allowed men to marry up to four wives, to divorce them whenever the husbands wished, and to retain custody of children. The law put the value of a woman's life at half of that of a man's life, and the value of her testimony at half that of a man's testimony.
Thus women in Iran became watchdogs and scapegoats, both the foot soldiers of the new regime and its victims. Newly empowered, they were also newly oppressed. Theirs was a paradoxical plight - and at the time, no one could have foreseen how it would one day make women a force of enormous change in Iran. — Nazila Fathi

Give up your holy books, and remember the Lord, you fool, and stop oppressing others so badly. — Bhagat Kabir

European conquerors knew their empires very well. Far better, indeed, than any previous conquerors, or even than the native population itself. Their superior knowledge had obvious practical advantages. Without such knowledge, it is unlikely that a ridiculously small number of Britons could have succeeded in governing, oppressing and exploiting so many hundreds of millions of Indians for two centuries. — Yuval Noah Harari

It's amazing the amount of anger, hostility and hatred some people show towards those of us who want to leave them in freedom. Hysterically, some statists characterize that as the voluntaryists trying to "force" their views on everyone else. "You're oppressing me, by leaving me alone, and wanting me to leave you alone!" Meanwhile, they wildly cheer when some politician promises to extort and control them. Go figure. — Larken Rose

She felt as though her nerves were strings being strained tighter and tighter on some sort of screwing peg. She felt her eyes opening wider and wider, her fingers and toes twitching nervously, something within oppressing her breathing, while all shapes and sounds seemed in the uncertain half-light to strike her with unaccustomed vividness. Moments of doubt were continually coming upon her, when she was uncertain whether the train were going forwards or backwards, or were standing still altogether; whether it were Annushka at her side or a stranger. "What's that on the arm of the chair, a fur cloak or some beast? And what am I myself? Myself or some other woman?" She was afraid of giving way to this delirium. But something drew her towards it, and she could yield to it or resist it at will. — Leo Tolstoy

When you're talking about an authority figure oppressing against people, it's the people that hold that authority figure up. If you want to get free of this bondage, then we need to think about ways to free ourselves rather than looking to the oppressors to free us. — Keith Stanfield

It was one of those dewy, clear, starry nights, oppressing our spirit, crushing our pride, by the brilliant evidence of the awful loneliness, of the hopeless obscure insignificance of our globe lost in the splendid revelation of a glittering, soulless universe. — Joseph Conrad

I know that the black man's sick attitude toward the white woman is
a revolutionary sickness: it keeps him perpetually out of harmony with the
system that is oppressing him. Many whites flatter themselves with the idea that the Negro male's
lust and desire for the white dream girl is purely an esthetic attraction,
but nothing could be further from the truth. His motivation is often of such
a bloody, hateful, bitter, and malignant nature that whites would really
be hard pressed to find it flattering. — Eldridge Cleaver

Though we love to think that we are civilized & developed than that of people lived centuries ago. In reality, the world is still run through the principle of 'Might is right'. Whoever - government or individual - has more power & money is dominating and, in many cases, oppressing people who are financially & politically weaker. — Abu Sufyan Ibn Harb

But the Jews are so hardened that they listen to nothing; though overcome by testimonies they yield not an inch. It is a pernicious race, oppressing all men by their usury and rapine. If they give a prince or magistrate a thousand florins, they extort twenty thousand from the subjects in payment. We must ever keep on guard against them. — Martin Luther

Whenever A is oppressing B, it is clear to people of good will that B ought to be independent, but then it always turns out that there is another group C, which is anxious to be independent of B. The question is how large must a minority be before it deserves autonomy. — George Orwell

It is a simple truth that the human mind can face better the most oppressive government, the most rigid restrictions, than the awful prospect of a lawless, frontierless world. Freedom is a dangerous intoxicant and very few people can tolerate it in any quantity; it brings out the old raiding, oppressing, murderous instincts; the rage for revenge, for power, the lust for bloodshed. The longing for freedom takes the form of crushing the enemy- there is always the enemy!- into the earth; and where and who is the enemy if there is no visible establishment to attack, to destroy with blood and fire? Remember all that oratory when freedom is threatened again. Freedom, remember, is not the same as liberty. — Katherine Anne Porter

During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to hallow their names to a certain extent for the "consolation" of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it. — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Justice is only achieved in beautiful fullness when the oppressed has been elevated back to their rightful place, and when those who were guilty of the oppressing have experienced repentance, healing, and restoration as well.
justice is only achieved in beautiful fullness when the oppressed has been elevated back to their rightful place, and when those who were guilty of the oppressing have experienced repentance, healing, and restoration as well. — Benjamin L. Corey

How hollow must your life be for you to waste it hating and oppressing others, whose lives are of no consequence to your own? — Ingrid Weir

Israel will never get true security and safety through oppressing another people. A true peace can ultimately be built only on justice. We condemn the violence of suicide bombers, and we condemn the corruption of young minds taught hatred; but we also condemn the violence of military incursions in the occupied lands, and the inhumanity that won't let ambulances reach the injured. — Desmond Tutu

By May, 1st, 1937, there should not be one single church left within the borders of Soviet Russia, and the idea of God will have been banished from the Soviet Union as a remnant of the Middle Ages, which has been used for the purpose of oppressing the working classes. — Joseph Stalin

In order for the artist to have a world to express he must first be situated in this world, oppressed or oppressing, resigned or rebellious, a man among men. — Charles Baudelaire

Twilight-kind, oppressing the heart as with a condensed atmosphere of dreamy undefined love and longing. — George MacDonald

Nationalism has a way of oppressing others. — Noam Chomsky

It doesn't really mean a great deal of difference to a life. You live as you wish to do and if a job is oppressing, you leave it. I've done it on several occasions. — George Woodcock

The greatest step forward in human evolution was made when society began to help the weak and the poor, instead of oppressing and despising them. — Maria Montessori

The truth is that any form of authoritarian control - any type of "government," whether constitutional, democratic, socialist, fascist, or anything else - will result in a set of masters forcibly oppressing a group of slaves. That is what "authority" is - all it ever has been, and all it ever could be, no matter how many layers of euphemisms and pleasant rhetoric are used in an attempt to hide it. — Larken Rose

In oppressing, one becomes oppressed. Men are enchained by reason of their very sovereignty; it is because they alone earn money that their wives demand checks, it is because they alone engage in a business or profession that their wives require them to be successful, it is because they alone embody transcendence that their wives wish to rob them of it by taking charge ... — Simone De Beauvoir

I have heard an argument that transgender people oppress transsexual people because we are trying to tear down the categories of male and female. But isn't this the same reactionary argument used against transmen and transwomen by those who argue that any challenges to assigned birth sex threaten the categories of man and woman? Transgender people are not dismantling the categories of man and woman. We are opening up a world of possibilities in addition. Each of us has a right to our identities. To claim one group of downtrodden people is oppressing another by their self-identification is to swing your guns away from those who really do oppress us, and to aim them at those who are already under siege. — Leslie Feinberg

If someone asks you why you're oppressing a world and you reply with a lot of poetic crap, no. I guess there can't be a meeting of minds. — Roger Zelazny

If Islamic countries can't come up with their own principles for women's competition," she said in one widely reported speech, "then the way dictated by Western oppressing countries will be imposed on us." Iran — Geraldine Brooks

16 Oppressing the poor to enrich oneself, and giving to the rich - both lead only to poverty. — Anonymous

Right now, computers, which are supposed to be our servant, are oppressing us. — Jef Raskin

Subjugation requires vigilance; if you relax your brutality even for a moment, the people you're oppressing will revolt at the first sign of weakness. That's why dictatorial regimes are always a slippery slope of cruelty doomed to end in failure. — Nenia Campbell

The number of men sitting at Atlanta and Leavenworth for revolting against the extortions of the government is always ten times as great as the number of government officials condemned for oppressing the taxpayers to their own gain. (Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy, pp. — Murray N. Rothbard

The very things in your life that seem
to be depressing and oppressing you
right now are going to be the means
by which you set yourself free. — James Lecesne

And with the rape, I was showing why the rape statistics are exaggerated, and saying that date rape was much more complex than the way feminists had portrayed it, as men oppressing women. — Warren Farrell

The accursed one does not allow the eye of the heart to see the Lord or His saints. He darkens our heart in every way. He scatters faith, oppressing, burning and darkening us inwardly. We must look upon all such actions as illusions and falsehood, and break through this imaginary wall to the Lord, or to His Holy Mother, or His saints. As soon as you break through this wall you will be immediately saved. 'Your faith has made you whole' (Mt. 9:22). — John Of Kronstadt

Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another. — Karl Marx

God wants to set the oppressed free from being oppressed and the oppressors free from oppressing. — Desmond Tutu

In order to be heard by the oppressing class, one must speak as a member of it. Not only the language, but the diction. The accusation of tyranny, however well-founded in fact, is dismissed unless it is delivered in the manner that power recognizes as powerful. — James S.A. Corey

If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing. — Malcolm X

Terrorism should be considered a valuable tactic when it is used to put to death some noted leader of the oppressing forces well known for his cruelty, his efficiency in repression, or other quality that makes his elimination useful. But the killing of persons of small importance is never advisable, since it brings on an increase of reprisals, including deaths. — Ernesto Che Guevara

The average European does not seem to feel free until he succeeds in enslaving and oppressing others. — Bernard Berenson

Everyone that gets an authority into his hands tyrannizes over others; as many husbands, parents, masters, magistrates, that live after the flesh do carry themselves like oppressing lords over such as are under them, not knowing that their wives, children, servants, subjects are their fellow creatures, and hath an equal privilege to share them in the blessing of liberty. — Gerrard Winstanley

The sick woman especially: no one surpasses her in refinements for ruling, oppressing, tyrannising. — Friedrich Nietzsche

In all times and in all places, whatever may be the name that the government takes, whatever has been its origin, or its organization, its essential function is always that of oppressing and exploiting the masses, and of defending the oppressors and exploiters. Its principal characteristic and indispensable instruments are the bailiff and the tax collector, the soldier and the prison. And to these are necessarily added the time-serving priest or teacher, as the case may be, supported and protected by the government, to render the spirit of the people servile and make them docile under the yoke. — Errico Malatesta

The basic function of the government everywhere in all times, whatever title it adopts and whatever its origin and organisation may be, is always that of oppressing and exploiting the masses, of defending the oppressors and the exploiters: and it's principal, characteristic and indispensable instruments are the police agent and the tax-collector, the soldier and the gaoler - to whom must be invariably added the trader in lies, be he priest of schoolmaster, remunerated or protected by the government to enslave minds and make them docilely accept the yoke. — Errico Malatesta

Some people are afraid of generosity. They feel they will be taken advantage of or oppressed. In cultivating generosity, we are only oppressing our greed and attachment. This allows our true nature to come out and become lighter and freer. — Ajahn Chah

When we oppress others, we end up oppressing ourselves. All — Desmond Tutu

I believe that there will be ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those who do the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the system of exploitation. I believe that there will be that kind of clash, but I don't think it will be based on the color of the skin ... — Malcolm X

I like the image of The Old Man and the Sea, of striving and succeeding but finding that the success was ghost success. In other words, in the long run, after a certain age, the motives for success, pride or oppressing people or getting power. — Allen Ginsberg

Hitherto, every form of society has been based ... on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes. — Karl Marx

Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them. — Assata Shakur

The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them. — Karl Marx

Without such knowledge, it is unlikely that a ridiculously small number of Britons could have succeeded in governing, oppressing and exploiting so many hundreds of millions of Indians for two centuries. Throughout — Yuval Noah Harari

Most rebellions and revolutions end up with the oppressed group coming to power and inflicting the same evils they endured on some new group that they are now oppressing, I argued. Violence, hoarding power and resources, that's the basic human M.O. — Norman Ollestad

One great object of the Constitution was to restrain majorities from oppressing minorities or encroaching upon their just rights. — James K. Polk

Conditioned by the position of oppressing others, any situation other than their former seems to them like oppression. Formerly, they could eat, dress, wear shoes, be educated, travel, and hear Beethoven; while millions did not eat, had no clothes or shoes, neither studied nor traveled, much less listened to Beethoven. — Paulo Freire

I've seen this idea put forward a hundred times - that a proper feminist would do her own hoovering, Germaine Greer cleans her own lavvy, and Emily Wilding Davison threw herself under that horse, hands still pine-y fresh from Mr Muscle Oven Cleaner. On this basis alone, how many women have had to conclude, sighingly, as they hire a cleaner, that they can't, then, be a feminist?
But, of course, the hiring of domestic help isn't a case of women oppressing other women, because WOMEN DID NOT INVENT DUST. THE STICKY RESIDUE THAT COLLECTS ON THE KETTLE DOES NOT COME OUT OF WOMEN'S VAGINAS. IT IS NOT OESTROGEN THAT COVERS THE DINNER PLATES IN TOMATO SAUCE, FISHFINGER CRUMBS AND BITS OF MASH. MY UTERUS DID NOT RUN UPSTAIRS AND THROW ALL OF THE KIDS' CLOTHES ON THE FLOOR AND PUT JAM ON THE BANISTER. AND IT IS NOT MY TITS THAT HAVE SKEWED THE GLOBAL ECONOMY TOWARDS DOMESTIC WORK FOR WOMEN. — Caitlin Moran

How reprehensible it is when those blessed with commodities insist on ignoring the poor. Better to torment them, force them into indentured servitude, inflict compulsion and blows - this at least produces a connection, fury and a pounding heart, and these too constitute a form of relationship. But to cower in elegant homes behind golden garden gates, fearful lest the breath of warm humankind touch you, unable to indulge in extravagances for fear they might be glimpsed by the embittered oppressed, to oppress and yet lack the courage to show yourself as an oppressor, even to fear the ones you are oppressing, feeling ill at ease in your own wealth and begrudging others their ease, to resort to disagreeable weapons that require neither true audacity nor manly courage, to have money, but only money, without splendor: That's what things look like in our cities at present — Robert Walser

If you are a white male, you don't deserve to live. You are a cancer, you're a disease, white males have never contributed anything positive to the world! They only murder, exploit and oppress non-whites! At least a white woman can have sex with a black man and make a brown baby but what can a white male do? He's good for nothing. Slavery, genocides against aboriginal peoples and massive land confiscation, the inquisition, the holocaust, white males are all to blame! You maintain your white male privilege only by oppressing, discriminating against and enslaving others! — Noel Ignatiev

While we should never walk around feeling guilty for people's affliction (after all, it's the devil that is oppressing them, not us!) we must nonetheless accept the responsibility to grow up into the image of Christ, so that Jesus is able to express Himself through us in fullness. — Andy Hayner

Negative freedom is freedom from - freedom from oppression, whether it's a colonial power or addiction to alcohol oppressing you. You need to be freed from negative freedom. Positive freedom is freedom for, freedom to be. And that's what's routinely ignored today. — Os Guinness

Oppressing you, trapping you in an endless cycle of poverty and death, just because we think you are different from us? That is not right. And as any student of history can tell you, it will end poorly. — Victoria Aveyard

... back then the sky seemed so vast.

And now the sky above me... is low, and narrow, and heavy. — Inio Asano

The nation has been turned upside down and inside out. The country that was once discovered by people seeking religious freedom is now oppressing religious rights. It has been a slow train rumbling down the track of destruction since the 1960's. It started with the removal of the Bible from our public schools. Next the generation known as the 'love generation' opened the door for the approval of sex outside of marriage. For every ten years since then, it's been a slippery slope of materialism, I got mine, what can you do for me, and money is power.
We as a nation have stopped focusing on God and family and replaced them with money and success. Parents are teaching their children to do whatever it takes to get ahead ... just don't get caught. If you do, find someone to blame it on. — Rick Mayhew

When we see others as the enemy, we risk becoming what we hate. When we oppress others, we end up oppressing ourselves. All of our humanity is dependent upon recognizing the humanity in others. — Desmond Tutu

It is necessary to distinguish the nationalism of the oppressing nations from the nationalism of the oppressed — Isaac Deutscher

I found a kind of party terrorism pervading and oppressing the minds of our best men. — James A. Garfield

We pray against the domestic enemies of the Constitution, against this demon of tyranny who is using the White House occupant. That demonic spirit is oppressing us. — Gordon Klingenschmitt

History is full of examples of regimes that were oppressing at home and aggressive abroad, and I can't think of too many liberal democracies engaging in counterfeiting, drug running, missile proliferation, and just about any other illegal activity you can think of as North Korea does. — Ed Royce

And suddenly it grew clear to him that what had been oppressing him and would not leave him was all dropping away at once from two sides, from ten sides, and from all sides. He was sorry for them, he must act so as not to hurt them: release them and free himself from these sufferings. 'How good and how simple!' he thought. 'And the pain?' he asked himself. 'What has become of it? Where are you, pain?'
He turned his attention to it.
'Yes, here it is. Well, what of it? Let the pain be — Leo Tolstoy

I feel that man-hating is an honorable and viable political act, that the oppressed have a right to class-hatred against the class that is oppressing them. — Robin Morgan

There is a cowardly propensity in the human heart that delights in oppressing somebody else, and in the gratification of this base desire we always select a victim that can be outraged with safety. — James T. Rapier

It is regrettable that Senator Kennedy has chosen Veteran's Day to continue leveling baseless and false attacks that send the wrong signal to our troops and our enemy during a time of war. It is also regrettable that Senator Kennedy has found more time to say negative things about President Bush then he ever did about Saddam Hussein. If America were to follow Senator Kennedy's foreign policy, Saddam Hussein would not only still be in power, he would be oppressing and occupying Kuwait. — Scott McClellan

Wars have ever been but another aristocratic mode of plundering and oppressing commerce. — Richard Cobden

The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society. — Thomas Jefferson

I have some good friends of my own who happen to be gay, and when it comes to gay, straight, or whatever, I'm for anything life-affirmative. I'm for gay power, straight power, male power, female power; everybody should feel empowered without oppressing anyone who's different. — Matthew McConaughey