Quotes About Oppression

It's okay for the President to start a war in Iraq, but it's not okay for me to talk about what I see around me in the ghetto.

Gifts make slaves.

But on the other side I am very glad that I can at least enjoy some freedom.

There are real consequences when women speak out. It's really dangerous, and it takes real courage. We are still speaking out against a white male majority. Forget the glass ceiling. We haven't even broken the glass floor!

Antiblack racism is not only happening in the United States. It's actually happening all across the globe.

We know that if gold, if fraud, if force can defeat us, they will all be used. And we have resolved that they shall not defeat us. We shall arm. We shall meet fraud and falsehood with defiance, and force with force, if need be.

If the empire were to collapse, I should personally feel extremely sad. I absolutely do not believe that the personal rule of Napoleon III has been corrupting and oppressive for France-but quite the contrary, it is demonstrably necessary, conciliatory, progressive, and generally intelligent and democratic in the best sense of the word.

l'oppressione, l'orrore, i massacri erano terminati per sempre. Il mondo progredito non li avrebbe più tollerati.

Power concedes nothing without a demand.

I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ; I therefore hatethe corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial, and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity. I look upon it as the climax of all misnomers, the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels.

You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.

For of all slaveholders with whom I have ever met, religious slaveholders are the worst. I have ever found them the meanest and basest, the most cruel and cowardly, of all others.

Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.

What to the Slave is the 4th of July?

We have men sold to build churches, women sold to support the gospel, and babes sold to purchase Bibles for the poor heathen, all for the glory of God and the good of souls. The slave auctioneer's bell and the church-going bell chime in with each other, and the bitter cries of the heart-broken slave are drowned in the religious shouts of his pious master. Revivals of religion and revivals in the slave trade go hand in hand.

It was necessary to keep our religious masters at St. Michael's unacquainted with the fact, that, instead of spending the Sabbath in wrestling, boxing, and drinking whisky, we were trying to learn how to read the will of God; for they had much rather see us engaged in those degrading sports, than to see us behaving like intellectual, moral, and accountable beings.

The Irish, who, at home, readily sympathize with the oppressed everywhere, are instantly taught when they step upon our soil to hate and despise the Negro...Sir, the Irish-American will one day find out his mistake.

Power concedes nothing without demand. It never has and never will. Show me the exact amount of wrong and injustices that are visited upon a person and I will show you the exact amount of words endured by these people.

Beat and cuff your slave, keep him hungry and spiritless, and he will follow the chain of his master like a dog; but, feed and clothe him well, - work him moderately - surround him with physical comfort, - and dreams of freedom intrude. Give him a bad master, and he aspires to a good master; give him a good master, and he wishes to become his own master.

it was worth half-cent to kill a nigger, and a half-cent to bury one.

My long-crushed spirit rose, cowardice departed, bold defiance took its place; and I now resolved that, however long I might remain a slave in form, the day had passed forever when I could be a slave in fact.

This will be seen by the fact, that the slaveholders like to have their slaves spend those days just in such a manner as to make them as glad of their ending as of their beginning. Their object seems to be, to disgust their slaves with freedom, by plunging them into the lowest depths of dissipation.

There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.

The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart