Quotes About Oppression

The Orphan Master's Son

Baseball is very big with my people. It figures. It's the only way we can get to shake a bat at a white man without starting a riot.

We used to root for the Indians against the cavalry, because we didn't think it was fair in the history books that when the cavalry won it was a great victory, and when the Indians won it was a massacre.

For years they told us where to sit, where to eat, and where to live. Now they want to dictate our bedroom habits. First the white man tells me to sit in the back of the bus. Now it looks like he wants me to sleep under the bed. Back in the days of slavery, black folks couldn't grow kids fast enough for white folks to harvest. Now that we've got a little taste of power, white folks want us to call a moratorium on having children.

Are there no prisons?

Cosas como esa sucedían todo el tiempo, pero una se callaba. En esa época no era como ahora, las mujeres no tenían ningún derecho… Los que hacían la ley eran los hombres". A los dieciséis o diecisiete años ya sabía lo que son y lo que valen los hombres, y cuando se casó lo hizo sin grandes ilusiones sobre ellos en general y sobre el que esposaría en particular.

There remains an experience of incomparable value. We have for once learned to see the great events of world history from below, from the perspective of the outcasts, the suspects, the maltreated in short, from the perspective of those who suffer. Mere waiting and looking on is not Christian behavior. Christians are called to compassion and to action.

I wonder why it is that we find some days so much more oppressive than others, for no apparent reason. Is it growing pains - or spiritual trial? Once they're over, the world looks quite a different place again.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

To reproach in a modern tyranny a people as a whole for failing to revolt is as if one would reproach a prisoner for failing to escape from a heavily guarded prison.

We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.

The men who beat me were driven as much by fear as hate.

Have you seen a hungry man with a gun? Of course not. Such things don't exist. It's like saying, have you ever seen a hungry lion? Of course not, because as soon as you did he wouldn't be hungry anymore. The men here with guns are the same. They can shoot, arrest, kill anyone they want. They've done it many times before. If a soldier sees you there's nothing I can do to help. Not even God will save a fool.

Nothing happened here. Nothing extraordinary for its time. Two nuns held slaves like any priest or explorer or settler in the New World. It is the others, the ones they held, who keep the memory, who imagine over and over again where they might be. It is they who keep these details alive and raw like yesterday. They twist and turn in all imaginations to come, in plain sight or in disguise. This fragile place and its muscular dreams. Nothing really happened here

I had to write a requiem for all those who died, who had suffered. (...) But how could I do it? I was constantly under suspicion then, and critics counted what percentage of my symphonies was in a major key and what percentage in a minor key. That oppressed me, it deprived me of the will to compose.

The implication of nonconformity is intolerable to Communists.

Workin' 9 to 5, what a way to make a livin' Barely gettin' by, it's all takin' and no givin' They just use your mind and you never get the credit It's enough to drive you crazy if you let it 9 to 5, yeah they got you where they want you There's a better life, and you dream about it, don't you? It's a rich man's game no matter what they call it And you spend your life puttin' money in his wallet

It is like a kingdom. It is the same old thing, just a different name, to keep the peasants in line. A system of the higher ups against the little people. They believe that there is only their God, and that all the others are evil. That there is only one way to be good, and that is the way they teach. And if you do not follow their instructions you will be damned for eternity.

The people in Iraq lived essentially good lives. They had brilliant health and education systems. Saddam actually created an incredible infrastructure in a very difficult country, but they were a Mafia family. If you said anything against that regime or that family you would be killed instantly.

People who are powerless make an open theater of violence.

I mean, what happened to developing the individual, to encouraging subversion and independence? I thought that's what this place was all about. Instead, it's, you know, just the old bourgeois concept of togetherness–i.e., conformity–under the guise of PC liberalism. It's fucking oppressive, man. It's downright totalitarian.

People don't run the cartel; the cartel runs people.

Car là encore ces hommes se livraient à quelque chose de grotesque lorsqu'ils embêtaient leur famille pour qu'elle leur achète un costume tout neuf pour leur procès. Les tribunaux ne prenaient jamais en considération la tenue des inculpés. Ils auraient pu comparaître dans des sacs à pommes de terre, les juges n'en avaient rien à faire. La seule chose qui comptait était la couleur de leur peau et les chefs d'accusation.

Give the peasants neither life nor death.