Opression Quotes & Sayings

Islam has always been a force that dispels tyrants and tyranny, opression and exploitaion. Islam has always been a force that militates for justice. — Louis Farrakhan

To punish the oppressors of humanity is clemency; to forgive them is cruelty. — Maximilien De Robespierre

The name of the regime where media is on the side of the government is undoubtedly fascism, a regime of the sick minds where freedoms are drowned in the cold waters of oppressions! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. — Frederick Douglass

Only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable. — Milton Friedman

Never forget that turning a blind eye to oppression and watching from the sidelines is itself opression — Harun Yahya

It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived. — Harper Lee

My passion is to see ordinary believers receive extraordinary answers to their prayers. — Jane Glenchur

It is not the destination that matters, but how one arrives there. — Brandon Sanderson

Do you do them in that old-fashioned code,like daffodils mean I'm sorry I was late, daisies mean sorry I embarrassed you in front of your friends, these things here fanned out mean just thinking of you?Or did you just have them throw whatever was pretty together? — Daniel Handler

At any given moment, and that night, going back to — Elizabeth Gilbert

My diving bell becomes less oppressive, and my mind takes flight like a butterfly. — Jean-Dominique Bauby

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and opressions of the body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day. — Thomas Jefferson

Mankind being originally equals in the order of creation, the equality could only be destroyed by some subsequent circumstance; the distinctions of rich, and poor, may in a great measure be accounted for, and that without having recourse to the harsh, ill-sounding names of oppression and avarice. — Thomas Paine

The state is nothing but an instrument of opression of one class by another - no less so in a democratic republic than in a monarchy. — Friedrich Engels

If all men are born free, how is it that all women are born slaves? — Mary Astell

That anybody white could take your whole self for anything that came to mind. Not just work, kill, or maim you, but dirty you so bad you forgot who you were and couldn't think it up. And though she and others lived through and got over it, she could never let it happen to her own. — Toni Morrison

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. — Martin Luther King Jr.

But once a girl's heart is stolen, it's never returned. — Lacey Silks

Language has everything to do with oppression and liberation. When the word "victory" means conquer vs. harmony and the word "equality" means homogenization vs. unity in/through diversity, then the liberation of a people from a "minority" class to "communal stakeholders" becomes much more difficult. Oppression has deep linguistic roots. We see it in conversations which interchange the idea of struggle with suffering in order to normalize abuse. We are the creators of our language, and our definitions shape the perceptions we have of the world. The first step to ending oppression is finding a better method of communication which is not solely dependent on a language rooted in the ideology of oppressive structures. — Cristina Marrero

The regime had understood that one person leaving her house while asking herself:
Are my trousers long enough?
Is my veil in place?
Can my make-up be seen?
Are they going to whip me?
No longer asks herself:
Where is my freedom of thought?
Where is my freedom of speech?
My life, is it liveable?
What's going on in the political prisons? — Marjane Satrapi

Secrets with Laddie were the greatest joy in life. He was so big and so handsome. He was so much nicer than any one else in our family, or among our friends, that to share his secrets, run his errands, and love him blindly was the greatest happiness. Sometimes I disobeyed father and mother; I minded Laddie like his right hand — Gene Stratton-Porter

It is not the sanctuary that is in danger; it is civilization. It is not infallibility that may go down; it is personal rights. It is not the Eucharist that may pass away; it is freedom of conscience. It is not divine justice that may evaporate; it is the courts of human justice. It is not that God may be driven from His throne; it is that men may lose the meaning of home; For peace on earth will come only to those who give glory to God! It is not the Church that is in danger, it is the world! — Fulton J. Sheen

Strike as thou didst at Caesar; for I know / When though didst hate him worst, thou loved'st him better / Than ever thou loved'st Cassius. — William Shakespeare

The priest raises his foot. In it he feels a dull, heavy pain. This is no mere formality. He will now trample on what he has considered the most beautiful thing in his life, on what he has believed most pure, on what is filled with the ideals and the dreams of man. — Shusaku Endo