Quotes About Oppression

'1984,' one of the most important works ever written, helped us understand the Cold War. In '1984,' the dictatorship was always surveilling you. Now, young people want to be surveyed. They want people to know where they are at all times.

The first time I played was in Buenos Aires - was in 1983. The dictatorship was in position.

I am horrified by the moral amnesia that develops when a dictator dies.

Shame is something you'll find a lot of - particularly Catholic - girls feel about their bodies, about their sexuality, about their diet, about anything you like. Shame is the way you keep them down. That's the way to crush a girl.

And understand: class differences will not save you.

Our target is not negotiations, it is the end of the apartheid system. There can be no compromise about that.

I'm black. I'm gay. I'm culturally Christian. I am a walking target on so many levels, and it is horrifying and a cross that very, very many of us who look like me have to bear.

Bullies always have another target.

Racism is a moral catastrophe, most graphically seen in the prison industrial complex and targeted police surveillance in black and brown ghettos rendered invisible in public discourse.

We live in a world where black people are targeted for death and destruction, and we should not be surprised when moments such as these occur - in fact, Charlottesville confirms the violence that black people endure every day.

The truth is that Asian people have been targeted and discriminated against for far, far longer than COVID has been around.

People often ask me why I continue to speak out if it's hurting my family. But that's exactly why I speak out. The people Erdogan is targeting are my family, my friends, my neighbors, my classmates. I need to speak out, or my country will suffer in silence.

The Iranian regime continues to violate the human rights of its own people, targeting political and civil society activists.

Too often, systems of oppression turn those who are the targets of the oppression against one another.

I've gotten stopped for reckless eyeballing, for staring too hard. These officers think they're Tarzan and this is a jungle, that all the animals need to be tamed.

When slavery was over, those atrocities that were done by slave owners was passed over to law enforcement, and law enforcement took up that task.

You cant argue the tasks with a despotic autocrat. It doesnt work.

There has been no persecution I have not tasted, no oppression I have not suffered. I neither care for Paradise nor fear Hell. If I see my nation's belief secured, I will not even care about burning in Hell, for while my body is burning, my heart will be as if in a rose garden.

I remember being taught my place.

In terms of school, we never got taught anything about black history. Growing up, a lot of things are hidden away from you.

Ireland never lacked the capacity to feed its people. During the entire 'great famine,' the island continued to produce massive amounts of beef and grain. The Irish just couldn't afford to buy any of it due to the enforcement of rack-renting, high taxation, and suppression of manufactures.

A lot of people feel left out by a government that taxes too much and regulates them too heavily and seems to result in a set of circumstances where economic and political incumbents benefit at everybody else's expense.

If you're gay and you can't hold hands, or you're black and you can't catch a taxi, or you're a woman and you can't go into the park, you are aware there's a menace. That's costly on a psychic level. The world should be striving to make all its members secure.

I understand the outrage because it seems the list continues to grow: Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd. The injustices continue to mount and nothing seems to be changing.