Victims Of Oppression Quotes & Sayings

Elie Wiesel says that neutrality only helps the oppressor, never the victim. And I think you can apply that to journalism. — Jorge Ramos

History may be a nightmare - an endless cycle of violence and oppression. Old victims of domination soon became new perpetrators of domination. We have seen this cycle over and over again: American revolutionaries dominating Indigenous peoples and defending slavery, anti-colonial heroes becoming dictators, anti-racists supporting patriarchy and homophobia, liberals crusading for imperial invasion and occupation. Such a nightmare radically calls into question the power of radical love in human history. For King, if we accept such a nightmare, then only self-destruction awaits us. To dream is to hold death at arm's length. To love is to really be alive in history. Without radical love, nihilism triumphs - "power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight."1 — Martin Luther King Jr.

Who is to say that robbing a people of its language is less violent than war? — Gloria E. Anzaldua

Voldemort himself created his worst enemy, just as tyrants everywhere do! Have you any idea how much tyrants fear the people they oppress? All of them realize that, one day, amongst their many victims, there is sure to be one who rises against them and strikes back! — J.K. Rowling

The worst kind of oppression is when the victims think and talk in the language of their oppressors. — M.F. Moonzajer

He came from the gutters of England and anyone born and raised in those gutters knew that most persecution and oppression was inflicted by lawyers. Lawyers were the devil's servants who ushered men and women to the gallows, they were the vermin who gave orders to the bailiffs, they made their snares from statutes and became wealthy on their victims and when they were rich enough they became politicians so they could devise even more laws to make themselves even wealthier. — Bernard Cornwell

Oppression sometimes benefits its victims more than its perpetrators. — Andrew Solomon

I hold that in every situation of injustice and oppression, the Christian
who cannot deal with it by violence
must make himself completely a part of it as representative of the victims. — Jacques Ellul

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

The causes of any widespread scepticism are likely to be sociological rather than intellectual. The main cause is always comfort without power. The holders of power are not cynical, since they are able to enforce their ideals. Victims of oppression are not cynical, since they are filled with hate, and hate, like any other strong passion, brings with it a train of attendant beliefs. — Bertrand Russell

Liberals are more likely to see people as victims of circumstance and oppression, and doubt whether individuals can climb without governmental help. My own analysis using 2005 survey data from Syracuse University shows that about 90 percent of conservatives agree that "While people may begin with different opportunities, hard work and perseverance can usually overcome those disadvantages." Liberals - even upper-income liberals - are a third less likely to say this. — Arthur C. Brooks

When I look at people talking about intersectionality, what I see is the human being magnifying a biological attribute, and then putting them aside, putting them in a corner as victims of oppression....I most certainly don't see myself as a victim. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

In their behavior toward creatures, all men are Nazis. Human beings see oppression vividly when they're the victims. Otherwise they victimize blindly and without a thought. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

At the Carter Center we work with victims of oppression, and we give support to human rights heroes. — Jimmy Carter

Women themselves condition their daughters to serve the system of male primacy. If a daughter challenges it, the mother will generally defend the system rather than her daughter. These mothers, victims themselves, have unwittingly become wounded wounders. Women need to attack culture's oppression of women, for there truly is a godlike socializing power that induces women to "buy in" or collude, but we also need to confront our own part in accepting male dominance and take responsibility where appropriate. — Sue Monk Kidd

One of the most pervasive ways in which collusion with oppression is enacted is through victim blaming. Even when oppression is acknowledged, victim blaming (by victims themselves, perpetrators, or society) denies any relation between, on one hand, oppression originating in society, such as racism, and, on the other hand, inner oppression, such as self-blame or other psychic compulsions. Consequently, reflecting such denial, the victim blaming stance posits either a decontextualized, abstract, and thus dehumanized notion of human freedom - agency as atomized willing. — Marilyn Nissim-Sabat

In 2001, the Associated Press published a three-part investigation into the theft of black-owned land stretching back to the antebellum period. The series documented some 406 victims and 24,000 acres of land values at tends of millions of dollars. The land was taken through means ranging from legal chicanery to terrorism. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

Physical diseases, engendered in the vices and neglects of men, will seize on victims of all degrees; and the frightful moral disorder, born of unspeakable suffering, intolerable oppression, and heartless indifference, smote equally without distinction. — Charles Dickens

Roosevelt was as much concerned to end the oppression of Jews as Lincoln was to end slavery during the Civil War; their priority in policy (whatever their personal compassion for victims of persecution) was not minority rights, but national power. — Howard Zinn

Victims of oppression & injustice don't need our spasm of passion ... they need our legs & lungs of endurance. — Gary Haugen

Let us never cease to feel compassion for those in want. Let us never tire of helping victims of injustice and oppression. He who puts his faith in the restoration of human dignity cannot be wrong. — Poul Hartling

A sexual revolution begins with the emancipation of women, who are the chief victims of patriarchy, and also with the ending of homosexual oppression. — Kate Millett

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

The rationale seems to be that we keep people as victims by validating them, empathizing with them, and fighting alongside them for equality and the dignity they deserve. I don't think people are kept down by that. I believe what keeps people down is the constant dismissal of their pain, the degradation, the humiliation, the fear of injustice, and the continuous crushing of their will, their faith, and their hope. This type of oppression kills the self-esteem people need to empower themselves, and it's flat-out terrorism. — Kyrian Lyndon

If you grow up in a WEIRD society, you become so well educated in the ethic of autonomy that you can detect oppression and inequality even where the apparent victims see nothing wrong. — Jonathan Haidt

Jews must learn to say without excuse, without equivocation: despite our history and our powerlessness in the past, despite allthe injustices that we have endured
today, now, the Palestinians are the victims of oppression, and their oppressors are the Israelis. — Irena Klepfisz

They [feminists] share the instinct for tyranny and destruction - and they are filled with self-loathing. In the end, leftist feminists yearn to submit to, and submerge themselves within, a despotic monolith. Because they despise their own society and are bent on its destruction, they cannot concede that adversarial cultures may be more evil, because that would legitimize their own host society - and they can't allow that. It would rob them of the moral indignation -- and the identity of being victims -- that lies at the foundation of their politics of hate. — Jamie Glazov

The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb. — Benjamin Constant