Quotes About Oppression

Philosophical intelligence is never so truthful, pure, and precise as when it starts from oppression and does not have any privileges to defend, because it has none at all.

Cuando alguien ejerce un poder sin límites, no vacila en emplear toda la fuerza del Estado

Los tiranos creen que el poder se conserva a punta de bayoneta. En México no es así: basta con repartir a la masa un puñado de cohetes y unos barriles de pulque.

No queda otra cosa que una gran masa analfabeta creada deliberadamente por el Poder, una especie de muchedumbre amorfa que nos ha hundido a todos en una mediocridad general.

Every policy that begins on the assumption of keeping someone weak forever is doomed to fail.

I also knew two teachers who never got a job again in the entire Hitler period. They had to sell postcards to get by.

nearly half of all respondents, both Jewish and non-Jewish, had broken the law in a variety of minor ways. Typical of these were listening to illegal foreign radio broadcasts, belonging to illegal youth groups, offering aid and support to people threatened by the Nazis, and speaking critically about Nazi leaders and policies in the company of friends and acquaintances.

While only a handful of the thousands of non-Jews who took our survey had ever been sent to jail, taken into protective custody, or sent to a concentration camp even though the majority had committed illegal acts during the Third Reich, great numbers of the Jewish respondents

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.24

non-white' gay men] are run over at the intersection of racism and homophobia

Clearly the rise of Adolf Hitler and his jack-booted storm troopers to power did not augur well for peace.

maybe that's all history was: a succession of bullies and thieves, each

Because you brand our tongues with silence. Because you watch us in fear, even while we sing.

There's a strong message of divine righteousness in dictatorships. Every megalomaniac has to believe his actions are sanctioned by God.

He tells me that Filipinos are in jail because we Americans want a better world for ourselves. It's America that gives ammunitions to the dictator. He says, Your corporations can do whatever they want here as long as our government protects them from our discontents. It's you who will benefit from a Philippine dictatorship.

Give up Spanish, give up anything in the language that broke our hearts. Do not be tempted by English, the language that breaks our souls. Speak only in the tongue of tongues before any white man came.

Our sense of power is more vivid when we break a man's spirit than when we win his heart.

fire applied to the soles of the feet," prolonged sleep deprivation, immersion in cold water, and water forced down the throat to the point of suffocation.

Throughout this country's history there have of course been systematic efforts to create an official underclass.

Most British citizens had never seen anyone branded or whipped or subjected to thumbscrews. They had no idea that conditions on West Indian sugar plantations were so brutal that most of the slaves were literally worked to death in just a few years and most of the female slaves were too ill to bear children.

Hitler was moving ahead with his own plans for the church. He knew quite well how to deal with these Protestant pastors. "You can do anything you want with them," he once remarked. "They will submit . . . they are insignificant little people, submissive as dogs, and they sweat with embarrassment when you talk to them.

Real faith is never something that can be forced by the state. It's something that either be encouraged and smiled upon or discouraged and frowned-upon. Or, simply crushed

Religion is the most fragile of all freedoms. And that's because it is the most threatening to those in power.

years later, after Niemöller had been imprisoned for eight years in concentration camps as the personal prisoner of Adolf Hitler, he penned these infamous words: First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a Trade Unionist.