Quotes About Oppression

Censorship of anything, at any time, in any place, on whatever pretense, has always been and always will be the last resort of the boob and the bigot.

When men and women get their hands on religion, one of the first things they often do is turn it into an instrument for controlling others, either putting or keeping them "in their place." The history of such religious manipulation and coercion is long and tedious. It is little wonder that people who have only known religion on such terms experience release or escape from it as freedom. The problem is that the freedom turns out to be short-lived.

The Christian is a person who recognizes that our real problem is not in achieving freedom but in learning service under a better master. The Christian realizes that every relationship that excludes God becomes oppressive.

Yank: Sure! Lock me up! Put me in a cage! Dat's de on'y answer yuh know. G'wan, lock me up!Policeman: What you been doin'?Yank: Enough to gimme life for! I was born, see? Sure, dat's de charge. Write it in de blotter. I was born, get me!

While there is a lower class I am in it, while there is a criminal element I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.

The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose - especially their lives.

More than two hundred antilynching bills were introduced to the U.S. Congress during the twentieth century, but none were passed. Seven presidents lobbied for antilynching legislation, and the House of Representatives passed three separate measures, each of which was blocked by the Senate.

I realized this is what white people do to each other—they cultivate each other's fear. It's very violent.

This is slavery, not to speak one's thought.

Of all creatures that can feel and think, we women are the worst treated things alive

Tyranny and imagination are archenemies.

She spent a great deal of time staring into space, oppressed by the sense that she was waiting. But waiting for what? She did not know. Surely someone would call, someone must be needing her. Yet each day proceeded like the one before. Nothing intense, nothing desperate, ever happened. Time did not move. The home, the city, the nation, and life itself were eternal; still she had a foreboding that one day, without warning and without pity, all the dear, important things would be destroyed.

Just because Nelson has been released doesn't mean the government has done us any favors. We have nothing to be grateful for. The government destroyed our country, destroyed our people. If anybody needs amnesty, it is the government.

Abolition seemed a fantasy when Frederick Douglass called for all slaves to be released.

The assumption is simply that I hit on all the things I've hit on so far by accident, that my talent is just this raw thing that pours out of me, and then white people feel like they have to come in and contain it, refine it, and bring it to the place where it can been released.

Feminists declare that men and women are equal in all respects. They petulantly decry any atavistic male courtesy towards females as a relic of a still oppressive patriarchal culture.

When we hear the word 'slavery,' it can be easy to dismiss it as a relic, a crime from the history books, a shameful chapter of our past. But sadly it is very much part of our world today.

Is not the brand of 'double-dealer' stamped on the forehead of every democratic slaveholder? Are not fraud and hypocrisy the religion of the man who calls himself a democrat, and hold his fellow-man in bondage?

Religion and slavery are incompatible.

All religions, if you shrink them down, are all about controlling women's sexuality.

Across the globe, fundamentalists of all religions are on one side, and their attitudes towards women and towards female sexuality are almost identical.

Religious persecution may shield itself under the guise of a mistaken and over-zealous piety.

With regard to the moral and religious condition of the slaves, I cannot, either from what I observe, or from what is told me, consider it in any way gratifying.

Authoritarianism, religious fundamentalism and militarism are inherently patriarchal and hierarchical.