Quotes About Oppression

A weak man always seeks to hurt those lower than he

Give a low man one ounce of power and he'll throw ten thousand pounds of bricks on your head.

A weak man always seeks to hurt those lower than he is

To make an ox or water buffalo work so hard, it needs to be blinded and uninformed. That's what the government is doing to the masses now.

The guardians with their stern faces had no creative power. But they had strength and cunning, and they had found a way to steal and harness other people's powers for their own needs. They were forcing the children to describe the future they wanted, not the one that could be.

There are German soldiers on every corner.

A Caligula, or a Yuri Vorbarra, can rule a long time, while the best men hesitate to do what is necessary to stop him, and the worst ones take advantage.

Lord X was a tyrant, not a revolutionary. He wanted to take over the system, not change it.

Do you really think the rape of a continent dissolves in cigarette smoke?

TSHEMBE I do not recall that the Europeans have ever been exactly overwhelmed by morality—black or white! Or do you think they have suddenly become impressed because Kumalo is saying the black man wishes freedom? We have been saying that for generations. They only listen now because they are forced to. Take away the violence and who will hear the man of peace? (He sits on the box, an island in a sea of cloth) It is the way of the world, hadn't you noticed?

TSHEMBE Maybe that's what's botched up all the revolutions so far! (Erupting in spite of himself) Mr. Morris, your concern for nonviolence is a little late, don't you think? Where were you when we protested without violence and against violence? We did not hear from you then! Where were you when they were chopping off the right hands of our young men by the hundreds—by the tribe?

Obviously, the most oppressed group of any oppressed group will be its women, who are twice oppressed. So I imagine that they react accordingly: as oppression makes people more militant, women become twice militant, because they are twice oppressed.

In the twentieth century men everywhere like to breathe; and the Negro citizen still cannot, you see, breathe.

The things he taught me were great things: that all racism was rotten, white or black, that everything is political; that people tend to be indescribably beautiful and uproariously funny. He also taught me that they have enemies who are grotesque and that freedom lies in the recognition of all of that and other things.

I think it's very simple that the whole idea of debating whether or not Negroes should defend themselves is an insult.

I remember thinking that once there had been a time when women died of brain fevers caught from the prick of their hat pins, and that still, after all this time, it was hard being a girl, lugging around these bodies that were never right – wounds that needed fixing, heads that needed hats, corrections, corrections.

All war is fratricide, and there is therefore an infinite chain of blame that winds its circuitous route back and forth across the path and under the feet of every people and every nation, so that a people who are the victims of one time become the victimisers a generation later, and newly liberated nations resort immediately to the means of their former oppressors.

Didn't the secret police know the exact aroma and chemical composition of every subversive fart in Greece?

After a few days, I mused, I would have no trouble. Whoever heard of a revolution of fat men?

many Europeans were enslaved in North Africa and elsewhere. Africans were enslaved here, and slavery of one kind or another existed over much of the world. Even the poor of Europe lived lives but little different from those of slaves, and in many cases they were worse off. Slaves were at least fed and clothed by their masters, and the poor of Europe had no such care.

Read the Bible. There'd been whites held as slaves for several thousand years before the blacks were enslaved.

The Egyptians had Hebrew slaves as well as others. The Romans had Greek slaves as well as slaves from England and Gaul.

Sam wasn't allowed to attend classes because he was a Negro

I suppose there won't be any Mexican food in the whites-only homeland,' I said. Hm, I'd never thought of that possibility' Jerry said. He paused. 'They wouldn't be allowed to vote but they could cook and clean for us. Afterall, we're not extremists.