quotations about oppression
Oppression under the color of justice is always more formidable from the arts which are used to disguise its malignity; it leaves men of almost every condition helpless and hopeless; it accustoms them to look upon their best securities as perverted into instruments for the worst purposes; it compels them to exchange love for hatred, confidence for distrust, and submission for resistance.
SIMEON ASHE
attributed, Day's Collacon
The poorest being that crawls the earth, contending to save itself from injustice and oppression, is an object respectable in the eyes of God and man.
EDMUND BURKE
attributed, An Inquiry, Concerning the Author of the Letters of Junius
Power in the hands of the reformer is no less potentially corrupting than in the hands of the oppressor.
DERRICK A. BELL
Ethical Ambition
It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority. For there is a reserve of latent power in the masses which, if it is called into play, the minority can seldom resist.
JOHN DALBERG-ACTON
The History of Freedom in Antiquity
The earth is shamefully wronged by man's oppression.
MARY COWDEN CLARK
attributed, Day's Collacon
The merciless bigot, in fury and wrath,
May spread desolation and crimson his path--
For a season the murmurs of Freedom be hushed,
But its spirit by mortals can never be crushed.
It lives and will live! nor can it be driven
By despots away to its birth-place in Heaven.
It lives and will live! till Time's knell shall be rung,
And the funeral dirge of Oppression be sung.
JAMES LINEN
The Poetical and Prose Writings of James Linen
Since mankind's dawn, a handful of oppressors have accepted the responsibility over our lives that we should have accepted for ourselves. By doing so, they took our power. By doing nothing, we gave it away. We've seen where their way leads, through camps and wars, towards the slaughterhouse.
ALAN MOORE
V for Vendetta
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me. He has sent me to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to liberate the oppressed.
JESUS
Luke 4:18
Oppression tries to defend itself by its utility. But we have seen that it is one of the lies of the serious mind to attempt to give the word "useful" an absolute meaning; nothing is useful if it is not useful to man; nothing is useful to man if the latter is not in a position to define his own ends and values, if he is not free.
SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR
The Ethics of Ambiguity
You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.
BIBLE
Exodus 22:21
Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS
Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings
It is not under oppression that we learn how to use freedom.
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
Critical, Historical, and Miscellaneous Essays and Poems
Oppression is much more easily borne than an insult.
JUNIUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
The object of terrorism is terrorism. The object of oppression is oppression. The object of torture is torture. The object of murder is murder. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?
GEORGE ORWELL
1984
In the long run, the oppressor is also a victim. In the short run (and so far, human history has consisted only of short runs), the victims, themselves desperate and tainted with the culture that oppresses them, turn on other victims.
HOWARD ZINN
A People's History of the United States
The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains.
KARL MARX
The Communist Manifesto
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
The Tanners
Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.
BIBLE
Isaiah 1:17
If you aren't careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.
MALCOLM X
speech at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem, December 13, 1964
In every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to deceive and overawe the People.
EUGENE V. DEBS
anti-war speech, June 16, 1918