Quotes About Oppression

It is in the nature of a group and its power to turn against independence, the property of individual strength.

I dare anyone to spend 10 years in the laugh-track that is Chuck Lorre's hive of oppression and not suffer some form of an emotional tsunami.

So long as some are strong and some are weak, the weak will be driven to the wall.

If we were strong, self-respecting and not susceptible to frightfulness, the foreign rulers would have been powerless for mischief.

He who is whipped oftenest, is whipped easiest.

With reasonable men, I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they will certainly be lost.

The success of the abolitionist movement lay in its making real for people in Britain and America the slave ship's pervasive and utterly instrumental terror, which was indeed its defining feature.

The truth is,' replied Dantes, 'that I am too happy for noisy mirth; ...joy takes a strange effect at times, it seems to oppress us almost the same as sorrow.

The prisoner followed his guide, who led him into a room almost under ground, whose bare and reeking walls seemed as though impregnated with tears

The reign of Mazarin is over, but that of the financiers is begun. They have the money; your majesty will not often see much of it. To live under the paw of these hungry wolves is hard for a man who reckoned upon independence.

I never seek to protect a society which does not protect me, and which I will even say, generally occupies itself about me only to injure me;

El señor Morrel comprendió que nada podía intentarse: un comisario con su faja no es ya un hombre, es la estatua de la ley, fría, sorda, muda.

Io sono uno di quelli che gli uomini chiamano proscritti, banditi, briganti, e sia! Ma se porto via denaro al ricco, non tolgo mai nulla al povero. Odio la violenza, cerco di non versare sangue, amo la patria mia: solo la gente normanna mi è odiosa perché è gente tiranna».

A volte la gioia fa un effetto strano, ti opprime quasi come il dolore.

It must not be forgotten that it is especially dangerous to enslave men in the minor details of life. For my part, I should be inclined to think freedom less necessary in the great things than in the little ones, if it were possible to be secure of the one without the other.

Under the absolute sway of an individual despot the body was attacked in order to subdue the soul, and the soul escaped the blows which were directed against it and rose superior to the attempt; but such is not the course adopted by tyranny in democratic republics; there the body is left free, and the soul is enslaved.

No African has ever voluntarily emigrated to the shores of the New World; whence it must be inferred, that all the blacks who are now to be found in that hemisphere are either slaves or freedmen.

Men are much more forcibly struck by those inequalities which exist within the circle of the same class, than with those which may be remarked between different classes. It is more easy for them to admit slavery, than to allow several millions of citizens to exist under a load of eternal infamy and hereditary wretchedness.

It would seem that if despotism were to be established among the democratic nations of our days, it might assume a different character; it would be more extensive and more mild; it would degrade men without tormenting them.

Slavery received, but the prejudice to which it has given birth remains stationary.

Nothing is more repugnant to the human mind in an age of equality than the idea of subjection to forms.

Men are not corrupted by the exercise of power or debased by the habit of obedience, but by the exercise of a power which they believe to be illegal and by obedience to a rule which they consider to be usurped and oppressive.

The tyranny of the executive power will come in its turn, but at a more distant period.

Revolutions are not always brought about by a gradual decline from bad to worse. Nations that have endured patiently and almost unconsciously the most overwhelming oppression, often burst into rebellion against the yoke the moment it begins to grow lighter. The regime which is destroyed by a revolution is almost always an improvement on its immediate predecessor, and experience teaches that the most critical moment for bad governments is the one which witnesses their first steps toward reform.