Quotes About Oppression

Nobody up there is a friend of yours; nobody up there wants you to have what you would call freedom. The purpose of "government" is to produce consumers and workers who will keep the cost of labor down, and the profits high for the owners . . .

By Oppression's woes and pains! By your sons in servile chains! We will drain our dearest veins, But they shall be free! Lay the proud usurpers low! Tyrants fall in every foe! Liberty's in every blow! Let us do or die!

Jews, Gypsies, Kurds, and other minorities were generally safe within autocratic regimes such as Habsburg Austria and Ottoman Turkey but were killed or oppressed when these autocracies began giving birth to independent states dominated by ethnic majorities, such as Austria, Hungary, Romania, Greece, and Turkey.

seep in, with its physical cruelty, economic exploitation, and barren

Take the architectural legacy of Bucharest: Byzantine, Brâncoveanu, Ottoman, Renaissance, Venetian Classical, French Baroque, Austrian Secession, Art Deco, and Modernist, all writhing and struggling to break free of a dirty gray sea of pillbox Stalinism, like Michelangelo's Unfinished Slaves struggling to break free of their marble blocks.

Romania, as I am forced to refer to it, constitutes one of those indigestible ethnic nations, like Georgia and Armenia, that have miraculously survived the millennia despite being oppressed, overrun, and vanquished.

Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

You needn't worry about me. I know enough to do what every man ought to do in wartime when he's watched and threatened by bullies. I conceal my feelings; lie whenever necessary; pretend to admire the rascals who've ruined our city and our country; cheer dolts, bullies and knaves and damn all wise temperate men!

Nobody has any rights unless they've got a machine gun.

Most Americans don't know that military coups swept over half the country, with the acquiescence of the federal government. But that is what happened. The legitimate governments of southern states and cities were overthrown by force, by white supremacist paramilitary organizations. Black people and Republicans were disenfranchised and massacred. They call it the Redemption of the South, and what it means is we turn away from the idea of equality.

It is not only violent terrorists who induce fear as a means of communication. Intellectual terrorists are equally vile. Intellectual terrorists are emotional extortionists. These terrorists, who are often racists, sexists, classists, or religious bigots, employ the language of fear. They generalize and essentialize a people, reducing them to a phenomenon. They incite fear and terror toward their victims and force the victims into a horrified silence.

Air grew heavy, damp, almost solid. I was breathing bricks.

She remembered Nana saying once that each snowflake was a sigh heaved by an aggrieved woman somewhere in the world. That all the sighs drifted up into the sky, gathered into clouds, then broke silently on the people below - As a reminder of how women like us suffer, she'd said. How quietly we endure all that falls upon us

They had overshadowed her in life. They would obliterate her in death.

For some people, particularly women, marriage-even an unhappy one such as this-is an escape from even greater unhappiness.

Where I come from, one wrong look, one improper word, and blood is spilled. Where I come from, a woman's face is her husband's business only.

Mariam wondered how so many women could suffer the same miserable luck, to have married, all of them, such dreadful men.

Laila sees something behind this young girl's eyes, something deep in her core, that neither Rasheed nor the Taliban will be able to break. something as hard and unyielding as a block of limestone. Something that, in the end, will be her undoing and Laila's salvation.

Laila lay there and listened, wishing Mammy would notice that she, Laila, hadn't become shaheed, that she was alive, here, in bed with her, that she had hopes and a future. But Laila knew that her future was no match for her brothers' past. They had overshadowed her in life. They would obliterate her in death. Mammy was now the curator of their lives' museum and she, Laila, a mere visitor. A receptacle for their myths. The parchment on which Mammy meant to ink their legends.

One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs, Or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls. Laila

that each snowflake was a sigh heaved by an aggrieved woman somewhere in the world. That all the sighs drifted up the sky, gathered into clouds, then broke into tiny pieces that fell silently on the people below. As a reminder of how women like us suffer. How quietly we endure all that falls upon us.

Aku dan Hassan memandang. Menahan tawa. Anak India itu akan segera mengetahui satu hal yang dipelajari oleh orang Inggris di awal abad lalu, yang akhirnya dipelajari oleh orang Rusia di akhir 1980-an: bahwa penduduk Afganistan adalah orang-orang merdeka. Penduduk Afganistan menyukai tradisi namun membenci aturan. Begitu pula dengan adu layang-layang. Aturannya sederhana: Tidak ada aturan. Terbangkan saja layang-layangmu. Putuskan benang lawanmu. Mudah-mudahan kamu beruntung.

The suffering, the despair in this place, is like a wave. It rolls out of every bed, smashes against the moldy walls and swoop back toward you. You can drown in it

A jeep honked and Tariq whistled back, beaming and waving cheerfully. Lovely guns! he yelled. Fabulous jeeps! Fabulous army! Too bad you're losing to a bunch of peasants firing slingshots!