Oppression Oppressed Quotes & Sayings

The ignorance of the oppressed is strength for the oppressor. — A.R. Bernard

I remember when Jewish kids were home doing their homework. What happened? What the hell happened to our smart Jewish kids? If, God forbid, their parents are no longer oppressed for a while, they run where they think they can find oppression. Can't live without it. Once Jews ran away from oppression; now they run away from no-oppression. Once they ran away from being poor; now they run away from being rich. It's crazy. They have parents they can't hate anymore because their parents are so good to them, so they hate America instead. — Philip Roth

[U]nless oppressed groups stick together, and on alliances of self interest rather than do-goodism; nothing can be accomplished in the long run to dismantle the apparatus of oppression. — Shulamith Firestone

The danger of oppression is not just being oppressed, it's becoming an oppressor, — Jon Stewart

Dehumanization, although a concrete historical fact, is not a given destiny but the result of an unjust order that engenders violence in the oppressors, which in turn dehumanizes the oppressed — Paulo Freire

To hold a people in oppression you have to convince them first that they are supposed to be oppressed. — John Henrik Clarke

Like any oppressed people, they defined themselves by what offended them, which would give New England its gritty flavor and, it has been argued, America its independence. — Stacy Schiff

If the goal of feminism is to end patriarchy and gender-based oppression, then transgender politics supplies us one of the most important perspectives from which to view - and challenge - binary gender and gender-based oppression. As mentioned in previous chapters, if no clear distinction exists between "male" and "female," it becomes impossible to oppress people according to their gender. If we have no sole criterion for determining who is "man" and who is "woman," we can't know whose role it is to be oppressor, and whose to be oppressed. — Shiri Eisner

The hell of human suffering, evil and oppression is paved with good intentions. The men who have most injured and oppressed humanity, who have most deeply sinned against it, were according to their standards and their conscience good men; what was bad in them, what wrought moral evil and cruelty, treason to truth and progress, was not at all in their intentions, in their purpose, in their personal character, but in their opinions. — Robert Briffault

God allows himself to be humiliated and crucified in the Son, in order to free the oppressors and the oppressed from oppression and to open up to them the situation of free, sympathetic humanity. — Jurgen Moltmann

With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence? How could they be the sponsors of something objective whose objective inauguration called forth their existence as oppressed? There would be no oppressed had there been no prior of violence to establish their subjugation. — Paulo Freire

The subtlest and most vicious aspect of women's oppression is that we have been conditioned to believe we are not oppressed, blinded so as not to see our own condition. — Robin Morgan

Feminists have convinced themselves that any difference between men and women is oppression and that women in the United States are an oppressed minority. This is such a lie. American women are the most fortunate class of people who ever lived on the face of the earth. — Phyllis Schlafly

Difficult times do not produce gentility, as if there is an angle hovering over the world of the oppressed. — Jonny Steinberg

Progress is always relative: to the oppressed, it can only be viewed as an all or nothing deal - if oppression continues, even in a modified form, then the system must still be attacked until that injustice is eradicated. — Tim Wise

Identity politics instructs people to define their politics not by reference to general moral principles of justice and rights, but some shared experience of oppression. It divides people into myriad oppressed groups, each jockeying for power to secure its own interests against others - not put in place neutral rules that work for everyone (because such rules, in their thinking, only serve to entrench "existing power relations" and "structural marginalization"). — Shikha Dalmia

Traditionally Marxism attracts the oppressed. This, however, is not the case in the Arab nation ... The socialist programs in Arab history did not always come from the poor, but from men who had known no oppression and became the leaders of the poor. The Arab nation has never been as class-conscious as other nations. — Saddam Hussein

This kind of action is a prevalent error among oppressed peoples. It is based upon the false notion that there is only a limited and particular amount of freedom that must be divided up between us, with the largest and juiciest pieces of liberty going as spoils to the victor or the stronger. So instead of joining together to fight for more, we quarrel between ourselves for a larger slice of the one pie. Black women fight between ourselves over men, instead of pursuing and using who we are and our strengths for lasting change; Black women and men fight between ourselves over who has more of a right to freedom, instead of seeing each other's struggles as part of our own and vital to our common goals; Black and white women fight between ourselves over who is the more oppressed, instead of seeing those areas in which our causes are the same. (Of course, this last separation is worsened by the intransigent racism that white women too often fail to, or cannot, address in themselves.) — Audre Lorde

If you are blaming the oppressed rather than the oppressor you know that something is wrong. — Adam Snowflake

When a human being is oppressed, the natural tendency is to feel anger. Jazz is a response to oppression that is not bullets and blood. Jazz is the expression of harmony ... and at the same time of hope and freedom. — Herbie Hancock

The role of a socially committed historian is to use history, not so much to documentthe past as to restore to the dehistoricized a sense of identity and possibility. Such 'medicinal' histories seek to re-establish the connections between peoples and their histories, to reveal the mechanisms of power, the steps by which their current condition of oppression was achieved through a series of decisions made by real people to dispossess them; but also to reveal the multiplicity, creativity and perseistence of resistance among the oppressed. — Aurora Levins Morales

Assist your Muslim brother, whether he be an oppressor or oppressed. "Bu how shall we doit when he is an oppressor?" enquired a companion. Muhammad replied, "Assisting an oppressor by forbidding and witholding him from oppression. — Anonymous

Unfortunately, oppression does not automatically produce only meaningful struggle. It has the ability to call into being a wide range of responses between partial acceptance and violent rebellion. In between you can have, for instance, a vague, unfocused dissatisfaction; or, worst of all, savage infighting among the oppressed, a fierce love-hate entanglement with one another like crabs inside the fisherman's bucket, which ensures that no crab gets away. This is a serious issue for African-American deliberation.
To answer oppression with appropriate resistance requires knowledge of two kinds: in the first place, self-knowledge by the victim, which means awareness that oppression exists, an awareness that the victim has fallen from a great height of glory or promise into the present depths; secondly, the victim must know who the enemy is. He must know his oppressor's real name, not an alias, a pseudonym, or a nom de plume! — Chinua Achebe

Power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed. — Wally Lamb

eRemember though, that happiness can never be achieved through the expectations levied on another; such a notion is not doomed to fail - but is just doomed! Happiness can never be achieved through the distress or destruction that one imposes on the other person. When a child, now grown-up, does not resolve their deep-seeded anger with a parent or parents, the "other person" plays Hell trying to make-up for it. Married, divorced or dead, the 'other person' can never replace what was lost so much
earlier in the life and soul of the oppressed. Forgiveness must be the course for any future, substantive relationships. — H. Kirk Rainer

Often the oppressor goes along unaware of the evil involved in his oppression so long as the oppressed accepts it. — Martin Luther King Jr.

A second way that oppressed people sometimes deal with oppression is to resort to physical violence and corroding hatred. — Martin Luther King Jr.

The proper criterion for distinguishing "right" from "wrong" is not mysterious.It is embodied in the principles that advance the cause of the oppressed and exploited over the cause of those who live by oppression and exploitation. — Dhoruba Bin Wahad

The truth is that just as - biologically - males and females are never victims of one another but both victims of the species, so man and wife together undergo the oppression of an institution they did not create. If it is asserted that men oppress women, the husband is indignant; he feels that he is the one who is oppressed - and he is; but the fact is that it is the masculine code, it is the society developed by the males and in their interest, that has established woman's situation in a form that is at present a source of torment for both sexes. — Simone De Beauvoir

At the center of this worldview is the evil of oppression, the virtue of "marginalized" identities - based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion or disability - and the perfectionist quest to eliminate anything the marginalized may perceive as oppressive or "invalidating." Such perceptions are given a near-absolute presumption of validity, even if shared by a fraction of the "oppressed group." Meanwhile, the viewpoints of the "privileged" - a category that includes economically disadvantaged whites, especially men - are radically devalued. — Cathy Young

When had terrorists ever accomplished anything but to enrage people, drive them towards greater security, greater sacrifice of freedom? They only gave their oppressors more excuses for oppression. And the oppressors just drove the oppressed further towards violent rebellion. Extremists on both sides gave power to the very forces they fought against. — Ramez Naam

This pedagogy makes oppression and its causes objects of reflection by the oppressed, and from that reflection will come their necessary engagement in the struggle for their liberation. And in the struggle this pedagogy will be made and remade — Paulo Freire

[The myth of the absolutizing of ignorance] implies the existence of someone who decrees the ignorance of someone else. The one who is doing the decreeing defines himself and the class to which he belongs as those who know or were born to know; he thereby defines others as alien entities. The words of his own class come to be the "true" words, which he imposes or attempts to impose on the others: the oppressed, whose words have been stolen from them. Those who steal the words of others develop a deep doubt in the abilities of the others and consider them incompetent. Each time they say their word without hearing the word of those whom they have forbidden to speak, they grow more accustomed to power and acquire a taste for guiding, ordering, and commanding. They can no longer live without having someone to give orders to. Under these circumstances, dialogue is impossible. — Paulo Freire

Being a victim of oppression in the United States is not enough to make you revolutionary, just as dropping out of your mother's womb is not enough to make you human. People who are full of hate and anger against their oppressors or who only see Us versus Them can make a rebellion but not a revolution. The oppressed internalize the values of the oppressor. Therefore, any group that achieves power, no matter how oppressed, is not going to act differently from their oppressors as long as they have not confronted the values that they have internalized and consciously adopted different values. — Grace Lee Boggs

I seemed to see two camps before me, and there was something radically wrong with both of them. The people most passionate about social justice were moral relativists, while the morally upright didn't seem to care about the oppression going on all over the world. I was emotionally drawn to the former path - what young person wouldn't be? Liberate the oppressed and sleep with who you wanted! But I kept asking the question, If morality is relative, why isn't social justice as well? — Timothy Keller

If oppression produced saints, we'd want everyone to be oppressed. — Christopher Bram

If given a choice, I would have certainly selected to be what I am: one of the oppressed instead of one of the oppressors. — Miriam Makeba

To forgive an oppressor is oppression upon the oppressed. — Umar

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

The right of revolution is an inherent one. When people are oppressed by their government, it is a natural right they enjoy to relieve themselves of oppression, if they are strong enough, whether by withdrawal from it, or by overthrowing it and substituting a government more acceptable. — Ulysses S. Grant

Every person has many identities, and experiences those identities in unique ways, depending on location, time, and the rest of who they are. Not only can a single person experience both oppression and privilege, most of us do! Being able to accept and present that reality, being both privileged and oppressed, helps others see the complexity of both issues, and creates some wiggle room for a productive dialogue. — Sam Killermann

In order for the oppressed to be able to wage the struggle for their liberation, they must perceive the reality of oppression not as a closed world from which there is no exit , but as a limiting situation which they can transform. — Paulo Freire

Not only do the oppressed lose nothing when people of conscience boycott institutions that are persistently complicit in the system of oppression; in fact, they gain enormously from the ultimate weakening of this complicity that an effective and sustained boycott leads to. — Omar Barghouti

And the truth must finally lie in that which every oppressed individual feels within himself but hasn't the courage to express — Wilhelm Reich

For there is no sex. There is but sex that is oppressed and sex that oppresses. It is oppression that creates sex and not the contrary. — Monique Wittig

Women of today are still being called upon to stretch across the gap of male ignorance and to educate men as to our existence and our needs. This is an old and primary tool of all oppressors to keep the oppressed occupied with the master's concerns. — Audre Lorde

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

God's Word teaches a very hard, disturbing truth. Those who neglect the poor and the oppressed are really not God's people at all - no matter how frequently they practice their religious rituals nor how orthodox are their creeds and confessions. — Ronald J. Sider

Oppression costs the oppressor too much if the oppressed stands up and protests. The protest need not be merely physical-the throwing of stones and bullets-if it is mental, spiritual; if it expresses itself in silent, persistent dissatisfaction, the cost to the oppressor is terrific. — W.E.B. Du Bois

As is often the case, an individual who has been racially oppressed may be blind that the same mechanisms of exclusion and denigration are at work in gender oppression. — Chantal Zabus

The oppressed must cry out to God.
The oppressor must repent of his sins.
The liberated must give thanks. — Matshona Dhliwayo

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

Even exploitation and oppression still make society work and establish some kind of order. Only wealth without power or aloofness without a policy are felt to be parasitical, useless, revolting, because such conditions cut all the threads which tie men together. Wealth which does not exploit lacks even the relationship which exists between exploiter and exploited; aloofness without policy does not imply even the minimum concern of the oppressor for the oppressed. — Hannah Arendt

When Hughes writes, in the first two lines of his poem, "Let America be America again/ Let it be the dream it used to be," he acknowledges that America is primarily a dream, a hope, an aspiration, that may never be fully attainable, but that spurs us to be better, to be larger. He follows this with the repeated counterpoint, "America never was America to me," and through the rest of this remarkable poem he alternates between the oppressed and the wronged of America, and the great dreams that they have for their country, that can never be extinguished. — Harry Belafonte

Under no circumstances ought we to fall into the error of posing the religious question in an abstract, idealistic fashion, as an "intellectual" question unconnected with the class struggle, as is not infrequently done by the radical-democrats from among the bourgeoisie. It would be stupid to think that, in a society based on the endless oppression and coarsening of the worker masses, religious prejudices could be dispelled by purely propaganda methods. It would be bourgeois narrow-mindedness to forget that the yoke of religion that weighs upon mankind is merely a product and reflection of the economic yoke within society. No number of pamphlets and no amount of preaching can enlighten the proletariat, if it is not enlightened by its own struggle against the dark forces of capitalism. Unity in this really revolutionary struggle of the oppressed class for the creation of a paradise on earth is more important to us than unity of proletarian opinion on paradise in heaven. — Anonymous

In order to perpetuate itself, every oppression must corrupt or distort those various sources of power within the culture of the oppressed that can provide energy for change. — Audre Lorde

It takes a lot of work to keep someone oppressed and it takes a heroic effort to get out of such an oppression! — Danita Smith

When people have been oppressed for so long; they become immune to it.They sometimes see oppression as the alternative means to oppressed others. — Henry Johnson Jr

When the rich and the powerful rise they leave the powerless and the poor without possibility. — Auliq Ice

Don't oppress, don't accept to be oppressed and you will live free. — Auliq Ice

He has a way of drawing His loves back to Himself. A psyche separated from the peace (and the freedom) of Christ is liable to entangle itself in all sorts of folly and vanity, or confused witchcraft. On the one side it will preach, 'Empowerment!' But on the other it will scream, 'Oppression!' Yes, you now have the power to be oppressed: because as long as you look to be a victim, you will find yourself to be a victim. — Criss Jami

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.
Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, that each time ended, either in the revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes. — Karl Marx

When you have increasing power of religious groups, oppression of women increases. Women are oppressed in all religions. — Nawal El Saadawi

Then you will call, and the Eternal will answer; you will cry for help, and [God] will say: Here am I. If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday. — Maurice D Harris

The basic fact is that Christianity as it was born in the mind of this Jewish thinker and teacher appears as a technique of survival for the oppressed. That it became, through the intervening years, a religion of the powerful and the dominant, used sometimes as an instrument of oppression, must not tempt us into believing that it was thus in the mind and life of Jesus. 'In him was life; and the life was the light of men.' Wherever his spirit appears, the oppressed gather fresh courage; for he announced the good news that fear, hypocrisy, and hatred, the three hounds of hell that track the trail of the disinherited, need have no dominion over them. — Howard Thurman

Becoming conscious of racism does not mean you are a racist. — Auliq Ice

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

Oppression Olympics is what smart liberal Americans say to make you feel stupid and to make you shut up. But there IS an oppression olympics going on. American racial minorities - blacks, Hispanics, Asians and Jews - all get shit from white folks, different kinds of shit but shit still. Each secretly believes that it gets the worst shit. So, no, there is no United League of the Oppressed. However, all the others think they're better than blacks because, well, they're not black. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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

Religion, which was obviously created to give meaning and purpose to people, has become part of the oppression. This is true in both Eastern and Western religious traditions. The Buddha, Jesus and Muhammad were all revolutionaries who critiqued and attempted to dismantle the corrupt societal traditions of their time. Yet their teachings, like most things in human society, have been distorted and co-opted by the confused and power-hungry patriarchal tradition. What were wonce the creation myths of ancient cultures, have become doctrines of oppression. More blood has been spilled and more people oppressed in the name of religion than for any other reason in history. — Noah Levine

The stark nakedness and simplicity of the conflict with which humanity is oppressed - that of getting angry with and wishing to hurt the very person who is most loved. — John Bowlby

White women and black men have it both ways. They can act as oppressor or be oppressed. Black men may be victimized by racism, but sexism allows them to act as exploiters and oppressors of women. White women may be victimized by sexism, but racism enables them to act as exploiters and oppressors of black people. Both groups have led liberation movements that favor their interests and support the continued oppression of other groups. Black male sexism has undermined struggles to eradicate racism just as white female racism undermines feminist struggle. As long as these two groups or any group defines liberation as gaining social equality with ruling class white men, they have a vested interest in the continued exploitation and oppression of others. — Bell Hooks

The patriarchy longs for the days 'when men were men' and women were oppressed, subservient - and they can see no wrong in it. It justifies its former power and lust to hold on to it - and if possible, to regain it by quoting fundamentalist and radical religion and tradition and calling it 'love'. Some love. How can oppression and power over another person's life ever be 'love'? — Christina Engela

It's like the frog that tried to outdo the cow...see, the consequences are reflected in each of us as individuals. A people so oppressed by the West have no mental leisure, they can't do anything worthwhile. They get an education that's stripped to the bare bone, and they're driven with their noses to the grindstone until they're dizzy -- that's why they all end up with nervous breakdowns. Try talking to them -- they're usually stupid. They haven't thought about a thing beyond themselves, that day, that very instant. They're too exhausted to think about anything else; it's not their fault. Unfortunately, exhaustion of the spirit and deterioration of the body come hand-in-hand. And that's not all. The decline of morality has set in too. Look where you will in this country, you won't find one square inch of brightness. It's all pitch black. So what difference would it make... — Soseki Natsume

There can be no really pervasive system of oppression, such as that in the United States, without the consent of the oppressed — Rose Kennedy

The masculine ideal of perfection creates a hyper-sensitivity to any nuance of imperfection. Any man who commits his life to the perfectionistic ideal of masculinity is going to feel like a failure. The people around him will feel abused and oppressed by him. The only way to do things is his way, the right way, the ideal way. Every man who succeeds at this game will wind up in the same place: Alone in his victory. At the top of the pyramid there's no room for anyone else. — Mary Crocker Cook

The object of a dialogical-liberterian action is not to 'dislodge' the oppressed from a mythological reality in order to 'bind' them to another reality. On the contrary, the object of dialogical action is to make it possible for the oppressed, by perceiving their adhesion, to opt to transform an unjust reality." "In order for the oppressed to unite they must first cut the umbilical cord of magic and myth which binds them to the world of oppression; the unity which links them to each other must be of a different nature. — Paulo Freire

The story of our inferiority is an old dodge, as I have said; for wherever men oppress their fellows, wherever they enslave them, they will endeavor to find the needed apology for such enslavement and oppression in the character of the people oppressed and enslaved. When — Frederick Douglass

Of course it is fine to highlight any group that you feel is important. But it's becoming impossible to define that group as "oppressed," because now every group claims to be oppressed, and none admit they are oppressors. White males used to be the bad guys, but now even they have caught the fever. White males are no longer a single group that can be blamed for oppression, because most of them now claim to belong to an oppressed or marginalized group themselves: they are drug addicts, physically handicapped, alcoholics, were sexually abused as a child, victims of an absent father, abducted by aliens, or turned into "success objects" by women. They can't oppress anybody because they are too busy being oppressed themselves. Besides, — Ken Wilber

your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard. Then you will call, and the LORD will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I. If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday. (Isaiah 58:8-10) — Jen Hatmaker

There is such a thing as the freedom of exhaustion. Some people are so worn down by the yoke of oppression that they give up ... The oppressed must never allow the conscience of the oppressor to slumber ... To accept injustice or segregation passively is to say to the oppressor that his actions are morally right. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Radical or revolutionary consciousness . . . is the perception of oneself as unfree, as oppressed - and finally it is the discovery of oneself as one of the oppressed who must unite to transform the objective conditions of their existence in order to resolve the contradiction between potentiality and actuality. Revolutionary consciousness leads to the struggle for one's own freedom in unity with others who share the burden of oppression. — Greg Calvert

We are blessed when our loved ones know what they have long before they lose us. It's the same with people. If they are taken for granted long enough, they can be oppressed to the point that they never experience the joys of life. Life on earth becomes a disappointment for them and Heaven becomes their goal. On the other hand, if they are loved and encouraged and appreciated, they will find all kinds of reasons to keep on living! It is never too late to help someone to see that they are valuable and wanted upon the earth. — Kate McGahan

May our land be a land of liberty, the seat of virtue, the asylum of the oppressed, a name and a praise in the whole Earth, until the last shock of time shall bury the empires of the whole world in one common undistinguished ruin! — Joseph Warren

Even revolution, which transforms a concrete situation of oppression by establishing the process of liberation, must confront this phenomenon. Many of the oppressed who directly or indirectly participate in revolution intend - conditioned by the myths of the old order - to make it their private revolution. The shadow of their former oppressor is still cast over them. — Paulo Freire

Another basic characteristic of liberalism which constitutes a formidable obstacle to an oppressed group's liberation is its conception of human nature. If selfishness, aggressiveness, the drive to conquer and dominate, really are among defining human traits, as every liberal philosopher since Locke tries to convince us, the oppression in civil society - i.e. in the social sphere not regulated by the state - is a fact of life, and the basic civil relationship between a man and a women will always remain a battlefield. Woman, being less aggressive, is then either the less human of the two and doomed to subjugation, or else she must get more power-hungry herself and try to dominate man. Liberation for both is not feasible. — Mihailo Markovic

No, no, my friend. You are kind, and you mean well, but you can never understand these things as I do. You've never been oppressed. — S. Alice Callahan

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

With my subjects - the thousands of people I have photographed - I have shared the joy of survival, the courage to resist oppression, the anguish of loss, the resilience of the oppressed, the brutality of the worst of men and the tenderness of the best. — Lynsey Addario

Oppression works in such a way that it holds every person responsible for the acts of any wrongdoer of the oppressed group. — Rita Mae Brown

I just don't believe that when people are being unjustly oppressed that they should let someone else set rules for them by which they can come out from under that oppression. — Malcolm X

Resherphire: True freedom is not that which is granted by an oppressor. It is a self-evident right, not something that originates from an external force. — Angry Zodd

In our native terms, the ironic style is often compounded with the sardonic and the hard-boiled; even the effortlessly superior. But irony originates in the glance and the shrug of the loser, the outsider, the despised minority. It is a nuance that comes most effortlessly to the oppressed. — Christopher Hitchens

It's not enough to be oppressed, you must also be in the right. Most oppressed people are in the wrong to an almost ridiculous degree. What shall I believe in? — Orhan Pamuk

It means understanding that different kinds of oppression are interlinked, and that one can't liberate only one group without the others. It means acknowledging kyriarchy and intersectionality - the fact that along different axes, we're all both oppressed and oppressors, privileged and disprivileged. — Shiri Eisner

1. God hears the cry of the oppressed. He even hears the cries of those whose oppression is a result of sin and rebellion. — Beth Moore

No oppressive order could permit the oppressed to being to question: Why? — Paulo Freire

I think one things that's really important in the boy community or whatever, or the boy things, is like, to realize that oppression is a two-way street. You know what I mean? That it's like, white men are really missing out - I don't wanna say white men are oppressed but ... — Kathleen Hanna