Quotes About Oppression

Girls learn to love and have sexual feelings in a position of low status, and the eroticization of powerlessness is a normal part of the construction of femininity.

I have loved justice and hated iniquity: therefore I die in exile.

It's a Crime for the Slave to Love her Bonds.

Do everything possible so that liberty is victorious over oppression, justice over injustice, love over hate.

Whenever we take away the liberties of those whom we hate we are opening the way to loss of liberty for those we love.

The government can't make people love me, but it can keep them from lynching me.

Poverty is not natural; it is man-made

I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down, Livin' in the hopeless, hungry side of town, I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime, But is there because he's a victim of the times. I wear the black for those who never read

If you'd bothered to ask me, Clark, if you'd bothered to consult me just once about this so-called fun outing of ours, I could have told you. I hate horses, and horse racing. Always have. But you didn't bother to ask me. You decided what you thought you'd like me to do, and you went ahead and did it. You did what everyone else does. You decided for me.

This was the story of our lives: minor insurrections, tiny victories, a brief chance to ridicule our oppressors, little floating vessels of hope amid a great sea of uncertainty, deprivation and fear.

You know the worst thing about a man hitting you?" Margery said finally. "Ain't the hurt. It's that in that instant you realize the truth of what it is to be a woman. That it don't matter how smart you are, how much better at arguing, how much better than them, period. It's when you realize they can always just shut you up with a fist. Just like that.

And there is the bare truth of it, for her and all the women around here. Doesn't matter how smart you are, how clever, how self-reliant—you can always be bettered by a stupid man with a gun.

The dark was oppressive, unrelieved by any neighbouring buildings or sodium light. It felt primeval,

You know the worst thing about a man hitting you?' Margery said finally. 'Ain't the hurt. It's that in that instant you realize the truth of what it is to be a woman. That it doesn't matter how smart you are, how much better at arguing, how much better than them, period. It's when you realize they can always just shut you up with a fist. Just like that

women around here. Doesn't matter how smart you are, how clever, how self-reliant—you can always be bettered by a stupid man with a gun.

You don't get to do that in Lee County, maybe not in the whole of Kentucky. Not if you're a woman. You play by their rules or they … well, they squash you like a bug.

Sophia took a seat at the back with the other coloured folk. Alice nodded at her. It felt wrong that she wasn't sitting with them, another example of a world out of kilter.

Men expected women to be calm, collected, cooperative, and chaste. Eccentric conduct was frowned upon, and any female who got too far out of line could be in serious trouble. Virginia Culin Roberts, 'The Women Was Too Tough

They don't want to end up like Harlan, with a damn war going on between the miners and their bosses.

They speak as if it was some how beneficial to an African to work for them instead for himself and to make sure that he will receive this benefit they do their best to take away his land and leave him with no alternative. Along with his land they rob him of his government, condemn his religious ideas, and ignore his fundamental conceptions of justice and morals, all in the name of civilisation and progress.

We've come from the same history - 2000 years of persecution - we've just expressed our sufferings differently. Blacks developed the blues. Jews complained, we just never thought of putting it to music.

The village may have replaced "the state," and it in turn may have replaced the fist with the hug, but an unwanted embrace from which you cannot escape is just a nicer form of tyranny.

the most important legacy of the 1960s has to be liberal guilt. Guilt over their inability to create the Great Society. Guilt over leaving children, blacks, and the rest of the Coalition of the Oppressed "behind." Guilt is among the most religious of emotions and has a way of rapidly devolving into a narcissistic God complex. Liberals were proud of how guilty they felt.

The majority-rule society has produced nothing more than heart-ache and intolerance. Throughout this majority-rule period it has been the members of the minority who have made an impact. It only takes one person to kill a hundred. It only takes one dictator to oppress millions. For better or for worse, it is the daring few who have shaped this so-called majority-rule society.