Quotes About Oppression

History is written by the rich, and so the poor get blamed for everything.

If you go on teaching people that life is cheap, and leave them to rot in ghettos and jails, they may one day feel justified in coming back to rob and kill you. Duh!

This culture is rabid to tell women how much oxygen they can use, space they can take, tables they can join, opinions they are allowed. Code words abound to signal when a woman has stepped too far: hysterical, bitchy, bossy, aggressive. (The man versions of these words are: energetic, strong, decisive, assertive, because "bossy men" are just called "leaders.") Women have always struggled for a credible place at the table.

History treats kindly the courage of Jesus, Abraham Lincoln, Ghandi, Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King, Jr., Harvey Milk, and, to a general degree, the millions of women who contested the patriarchy, but their own communities and contemporaries killed them for it.

Why does so much Christianity smack of power and aggression when Jesus was humble and subversive?

Ignorant intervention is absolutely a contributing factor to cycles of oppression. This

One of the things that the show did for me was bring up so many womens issues and the notion that homophobia is a form of misogyny. The womens community and the gay community are interrelated, whether youre straight or not. It also made me realize how connected women are everywhere. Women who are gay are repressed in similar ways as women who are straight.

That was what people did when they wanted to stop a girl from doing something—they shamed her.

And Robespierre, the Incorruptible, who loved us so much he cut off our heads so we would not be troubled by too many thoughts.

This word, the people in it- my mother, Tantine- they sort us. Put us in crates. You are an egg. You are a potato. You are a cabbage. They tell us who we are. What we will do. What we will be." "Because they're afraid. Afraid of what we could be." Tavi said. "But we let them do it!" Hugo said angrily. "Why?" "Tavi gave him a rueful smile. "Because we're afraid of what we could be, too.

But an ugly girl? Ah, child, the world is made for men. An ugly girl can never be forgiven.

Revolutions come about when small things happen to small people.

For the rich boys who get to go to the Sorbonne even though they're too stupid to solve a simple quadratic equation? For the viscount I was seated next to at a dinner who tried to put his hand up my skirt through all five courses? For the smug society ladies who look me up and down and purse their lips and say no, I won't do for their sons because my chin is too pointed, my nose is too large, I talk too much about numbers?

Their crops and possessions are being taken to build fortresses and buy warships so that a heartless queen and a false prince can attack realms that have not attacked us.

I hate the queen," said Gretta, clenching her fists. "I hate the palace and everyone in it. They take everything, while we barely have enough to eat. I hate you, too, Sophie!

This world, the people in it - my mother, Tantine - they sort us. Put us in crates. You are an egg. You are a potato. You are a cabbage. They tell us who we are. What we will do. What we will be." "Because they're afraid. Afraid of what we could be," Tavi said. "But we let them do it!" Hugo said angrily. "Why?" Tavi gave him a rueful smile. "Because we're afraid of what we could be, too.

Everyone said a girl with a strong will would come to a bad end. Everyone said a girl's will must be bent to the wishes of those who know what's best for her. Isabelle was young, only sixteen; she had not yet learned that everyone is a fool.

At times the brusque mass of everything that was not him seemed likely to crush Eddie into dust the way he crushed the dried-out moths that collected in piles on the protectory

Unless you can start some worldwide crime wave, I haven't the strength to defy him.

However, in 1774, when she was nineteen, her materials were confiscated by government authorities. They had caught wind of the young artist's success; it was illegal to work as an artist without guild or academy membership – something that, as a woman, was very difficult to achieve.

You want power-either because you've already had a taste of it and want more, or because you've been made to feel powerless for too long.

It is always the Germans who cause the trouble, what is it about Germans that they must molest and oppress?... They have never been civilized, said Sosthene...They were never conquered by Roman. They remain barbarians. Phoebe stared at him. It was a viewpoint... One is perhaps inclined to forget that even here in Britain that were four hundred years of the Pax Romana, he said gently. In Germany, no -- only the Vandals and the Goths. Every so often they burst out. It is in the breed.

There's only one thing that warms my heart, and that is the thought that we are going to sweep away these bourgeois.

Living in musty shadows and dismal, oppressive silence, Thérèse could see her whole life stretching out before her totally void, bringing night after night the same cold bed and morning after morning the same empty day.