Oppression Quotes

The web of domination has become the web of Reason itself, and this society is fatally entangled in it.

Herbert Marcuse

Oppression that is clearly inexorable and invincible does not give rise to revolt but to submission.

Simone Weil

Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who feels what is happening. Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand.

Simone Weil

The history of an oppressed people is hidden in the lies and the agreed myth of its conquerors.

Meridel Le Sueur

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

The truth is that every intelligent man, as you know, dreams of being a gangster and of ruling over society by force alone. As it is not so easy as the detective novels might lead one to believe, one generally relies on politics and joins the cruelest party.What does it matter, after all, if by humiliating one's mind one succeeds in dominating every one? I discovered in myself sweet dreams of oppression.

Albert Camus

First we kill all the subversives; then, their collaborators; later, those who sympathize with them; afterward, those who remain indifferent; and finally, the undecided.

General Iberico Saint Jean

It is often easier to become outraged by injustice half a world away than by oppression and discrimination half a block from home.

Carl Rowan

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever.

Martin Luther King Jr.

When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, - not anything - you can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.

Robert A. Heinlein, If This Goes

Rebellion to tyranny is obedience to God.

Thomas Jefferson

You know, it's not the world that was my oppressor, because what the world does to you, if the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough, you begin to do to yourself.

James Baldwin

True enough, the country is calm. Calm as a morgue or a grave, would you not say?

Vaclav Havel

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. But from the absolute will of an entire people there is no appeal, no redemption, no refuge but treason.

Lord (John Emerich Edward Dalber

I see the eight of us with our 'Secret Annexe' as if we were a little piece of blue heaven, surrounded by heavy black rain clouds. The round, clearly defined spot where we stand is still safe, but the clouds gather more closely about us and the circle which separates us from the approaching danger closes more and more tightly. Now we are so surrounded by danger and darkness that we bump against each other, as we search desperately for a means of escape. We all look down below, where people are fighting each other, we look above, where it is quiet and beautiful, and meanwhile we are cut off by the great dark mass, which will not let us go upwards, but which stands before us as an impenetrable wall; it tries to crush us, but cannot do so yet. I can only cry and implore: 'Oh, if only the black circle could recede and open the way for us!'

Anne Frank, The Diary of Anne Fr

A handful of soldiers is always better than a mouthful of arguments.

G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenb

We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again.

Nathanael Greene