Political Repression Quotes & Sayings

The prime role of a leader is to offer an example of courage and sacrifice. — Regis Debray

When understanding fails, there is always more force in reserve. As the "experiments in material and human resources control" collapse and "revolutionary development" grinds to a halt, we simply resort more openly to the Gestapo tactics that are barely concealed behind the facade of pacification. When American cities explode, we can expect the same. The technique of "limited warfare" translates neatly into a system of domestic repression - far more humane, as will quickly be explained, than massacring those who are unwilling to wait for the inevitable victory of the war on poverty. Why should a liberal intellectual be so persuaded of the virtues of a political system of four-year dictatorship? The answer seem all to plain. — Noam Chomsky

They have done this through sexual repression, economic repression, political repression, social repression, ideological repression and spiritual repression. — Frederick Lenz

She knew that oftentimes hurtful people were hurting people, so she determined to pray for them all the more. — J.E.B. Spredemann

When and where there is repression, what a woman does when she gets dressed in the morning may be considered political. Wearing or not wearing a veil, disobeying laws that prohibit transgender dressing, or wearing a large Afro in an institution that seeks to diminish the formation of racial alliances are all actions that can serve as challenges to domination — Maxine Leeds Craig

I Think art is the only political power, the only revolutionary power , the only evolutionary power, the only power to free humankind form all repression. I say not that art has already realized this, on the contrary, and because it has not, it has to be developed as a weapon, at first there are radical levels, then you can speak about special details. (1973 — Joseph Beuys

Everyone needs company, some kind of consolation. This is the rough comfort of strangers, the sympathy of touch. — Tor Udall

Non-violent resistance implies the very opposite of weakness. Defiance combined with non-retaliatory acceptance of repression from one's opponents is active, not passive. It requires strength, and there is nothing automatic or intuitive about the resoluteness required for using non-violent methods in political struggle and the quest for Truth. — Mahatma Gandhi

Everyone is familiar with the slogan "The personal is political" -- not only that what we experience on a personal level has profound political implications, but that our interior lives, our emotional lives are very much informed by ideology. We oftentimes do the work of the state in and through our interior lives. What we often assume belongs most intimately to ourselves and to our emotional life has been produced elsewhere and has been recruited to do the work of racism and repression. — Angela Y. Davis

Uh huh, you sure can, Mr. Man," the heftier girl said smacking her lips. She expressively started to wave her long fingernail in his face. "You that actor that is fucking Lailiana ain't you." "Ethiopia! How you gonna ask the man who he fucking?" "Shit, why can't I? That's what he doing! That's what I heard he doing. He grown. He can answer for himself." First of all, who the hell does shit like that? Secondly, did she just say that the big tittied heifer's name is Ethiopia? — Will Blue

Freedom isn't an illusion; it's perfectly real in the context of sequential consciousness. Within the context of simultaneous consciousness, freedom is not meaningful, but neither is coercion; it's simply a different context, no more or less valid than the other. It's like that famous optical illusion, the drawing of either an elegant young woman, face turned away from the viewer, or a wart-nosed crone, chin tucked down on her chest. There's no "correct" interpretation; both are equally valid. But you can't see both at the same time.
"Similarly, knowledge of the future was incompatible with free will. What made it possible for me to exercise freedom of choice also made it impossible for me to know the future. Conversely, now that I know the future, I would never act contrary to that future, including telling others what I know: those who know the future don't talk about it. Those who've read the Book of Ages never admit to it. — Ted Chiang

The well-marked path to knowledge is open to anyone willing to make the effort to follow it, though no one will ever quite reach its end. — Hans Cloos

The devotion that young Chinese feel to the Internet is driven by deep factors ranging from youth unemployment and income inequality to political repression and the demographic imbalance between men and women. — Evan Osnos

The social repression and ideological repression of women began with depriving them of education, political decisiveness, mobility and essentially creating sexual slavery. — Frederick Lenz

But given the changes that had already taken place in economic and political institutions, long-run repression was not a solution in England. The Peterloo Massacre would remain an isolated incident. Following the riot, the political institutions in England gave way to the pressure, and the destabilizing threat of much wider social unrest, — Daron Acemoglu

Life Stories: Why hunger for these? One, it fits a hunger. Maybe it is more like bossiness. Maybe we just want to be in charge of the life, no matter who lived it ... — Margaret Atwood

Well, Nigeria has played a constructive role in peacekeeping in various parts of West Africa. But unless and until Nigeria itself is democratic and respects human rights, it too may well be a source of much greater instability as political repression limits the ability of the people of Nigeria to achieve their full potential. — Susan Rice

I advocate revolutionary changes ... an end to capitalist exploitation, the abolition of racist policies, the eradication of sexism and the elimination of political repression. If that is a crime, then I am totally guilty — Assata Shakur

We see political leaders replacing moral imperatives with a Southern strategy. We have seen all too clearly that there are men-now in power in this country-who do not respect dissent, who cannot cope with turmoil, and who believe that the people of America are ready to support repression as long as it is done with a quiet voice and a business suit. And it is up to us to prove that they are wrong. — John Lindsay

It requires something more than personal experience to gain a philosophy or point of view from any specific event. It is the quality of our response to the event and our capacity to enter into the lives of others that help us to make their lives and experiences our own. In my own case my convictions have derived and developed from events in the lives of others as well as from my own experience. What I have seen meted out to others by authority and repression, economic and political, transcends anything I myself may have endured. — Emma Goldman

Man was always being jerked around between different people's ideas of god, depending on who'd won the most recent war, or palace coup, or political battle. This meant mankind was always being asked to accept deities foreign to his own nature. I mean, if your prophet was sexually insecure, or if his later interpreters were, that religion demanded celibacy or repression or hatred of women; if the prophet was a homophobe, he preached prosecution of homosexuals; and if he was both lecherous and greedy, he preached polygeny. If he was luxurious, he preached give-me-money-and-God-will-make-you-rich; if he felt put upon he preached God-of-Vengeance, let's kill the other guy; and no matter how much well-meaning ecumenicists pretended all the gods were one god under different aspects, they weren't any such thing, because every prophet created God in his own image, to confront his own nightmares. — Sheri S. Tepper

As soon as my trial was over, we tried to use the energy that had developed around my case to create another organization, which we called the National Alliance against Racist and Political Repression. — Angela Davis

Curiosity and irreverence go together. Curiosity cannot exist without the other. Curiosity asks, "Is this true?" "Just because this has always been the way, is the best or right way of life, the best or right religion, political or economic value, morality?" To the questioner, nothing is sacred. He detests dogma, defies any finite definition of morality, rebels against any repression of a free, open search of ideas no matter where they may lead. He is challenging, insulting, agitating, discrediting. He stirs unrest. — Saul D. Alinsky

Writing in a journal is just a stall, a waiting game, a way to tell yourself that you're working when you're not, that you're doing something of value when you're just using up paper, that you're a writer when in fact you're just going through the motions of one. Look at me! I have blank paper in front of me-and now I'm filling it, with words! — Robert Masello

Nonviolent action involves opposing the opponent's power, including his police & military capacity, not with the weapons chosen by him but by quite different means ... Repression by the opponent is used against his own power position in a kind of political " ju-jitsu " and the very sources of his power thus reduced or removed, with the result that his political and military position is seriously weakened or destroyed. — Gene Sharp

in order to maintain the cultural status quo of political and social hierarchical control, this same society perpetuates chronic fear through various modes of manipulation, such as mass media propaganda force-feeding its participants a reality of rampant consumerism, economic scarcity, and self-repression. In participating with this societal norm, we perpetuate a language that encourages chronic fear and the evasion of emotional responsibility, a language deficient in genuine self-confidence, mutual respect, compassion, or courage. This dynamic confluence of manipulating forces keeps us unconscious to the dramatic presence of chronic fear and our full emotional potency. — James W. Jesso

In life, you can be unhappy, or you can change things. And even if there are things you can't change, you can often change your mind-set and question assumptions that are making life less goof than it could be. — Laura Vanderkam

There are plenty of smart people who get nowhere. — Paul Graham

There are many different rivers that lead into despair: there's poverty; there's political repression; there's gender apartheid - there's a sense of culture loss; there's religious fanaticism. — Lawrence Wright

Freedom in every sense but primarily political sense, a rise in repression that stems from a repression of sexuality. It's AIDS, it's herpes, it's this, it's that. Ask any saloon owner what's happened to social life in America and they'll tell you it's a different world and these people are strongly misinformed by the media, peer pressure. — Jack Nicholson

Everyone should prepare NOW for this change, for I promise you that it will come, and only those who are ready will survive. — Sathya Sai Baba

Authentic femininity is a combination of class, tenderness and virtue. When a woman possesses these traits, a man will naturally want to be more of a gentleman around her. — Jason Evert

In the great majority of cases we simply do not know enough about the industry or company to come to sensible judgments-in that situation we pass. — Warren Buffett

I am a 20th century escaped slave. Because of government persecution, I was left with no other choice than to flee from the political repression, racism and violence that dominate the U.S. government's policy towards people of color. — Assata Shakur

You can see where it's going. The extraordinary political apathy that followed Watergate and Vietnam and the institutionalization of grass-roots rebellion among minorities will only deepen. Politics is about consensus, and the advertising legacy of the sixties is that consensus is repression. Voting'll be unhip: Americans now vote with their wallets. Government's only cultural role will be as the tyrannical parent we both hate and need. Look for us to elect someone who can cast himself as a Rebel, maybe even a cowboy, but who deep down we'll know is a bureaucratic creature who'll operate inside the government mechanism instead of naively bang his head against it the way we've watched poor Jimmy do for four years. — David Foster Wallace

Ebola haunted Zaire because of corruption and political repression. The virus had no secret powers, nor was it unusually contagious. For centuries Ebola had lurked in the jungles of central Africa. Its emergence into human populations required the special assistance of humanity's greatest vices : greed, corruption, arrogance, tyranny, and callousness. — Laurie Garrett

The Greeks invented the idea of nemesis to show how any single virtue, stubbornly maintained gradually changes into a destructive vice. Our success, our industry, our habit of work have produced our economic nemesis. Work made modern men great, but now threatens to usurp our souls, to inundate the earth in things and trash, to destroy our capacity to love and wonder. — Sam Keen

It takes no compromise to give people their rights ... it takes no money to respect the individual. It takes no political deal to give people freedom. It takes no survey to remove repression. — Harvey Milk