Quotes About Oppression

The fact that the ministerial conspiracy against liberty had risen from corruption was of the utmost importance to the colonists.

What gave transcendent importance to the aggressiveness of power was the fact that its natural prey, its necessary victim, was liberty, or law, or right.

once one claims that one knows what others need better than they know it themselves, one is "in a position to ignore the actual wishes of men or societies, to bully, oppress, torture them in the name, and on behalf of their 'real' selves Ã¢â'¬Â¦ albeit often submerged and inarticulate.

it is a fact that eleven million Africans were forcibly carried abroad, more than nine million of them to the Americas.

slave rebellions occurred on approximately 10 percent of all slave ships

10 percent of the slaves on such voyages were killed in the insurrections (which totals one hundred thousand deaths, 1500–1867)

They will cast your sovereignty in your face. No body will be argued into slavery.6

If that sovereignty and their freedom cannot be reconciled, which will they take? They will cast your sovereignty in your face. No body will be argued into slavery.

We're persecuted in the most civilized languages.

she's never complained about her lot, or argued with him, a sure sign she's oppressed

I tell Mum she married a patriarch Look at it this way, Amma, she says, your father was born male in Ghana in the 1920s whereas you were born female in London in the 1960s And your point is? You really can't expect him to 'get you', as you put it I let her know she's an apologist for the patriarchy and complicit in a system that oppresses all women She says human beings are complex I tell her not patronize me

I tell Mum she married a patriarch look at it this way, Amma, she says, your father was born male in Ghana in the 1920s whereas you were born female in London in the 1960s and your point is? you really can't expect him to 'get you', as you put it I let her know she's an apologist for the patriarchy and complicit in a system that oppresses all women she says human beings are complex I tell her not to patronize me

Shirley had long felt angry on behalf of her brothers who'd also been harassed by the police since they were young all black men had to learn to handle it, all black men had to be tough and when the police killed or beat someone, they were allowed to investigate themselves, and exonerated the accused

We slaves don't end relationships. Other people do it for us. Often we don't start them either, other people do it for us. We're encouraged to breed merely to increase the workforce.

I let her know she's an apologist for the patriarchy and complicit in a system that oppresses all women she says human beings are complex I tell her not to patronize me

The moment my father arrived in Britain as a young man, he was brutally stripped of his self-image as an individual and had to assume an imposed identity - as the visual embodiment of centuries of negative misrepresentations.

When you're a slave you dream of either owning slaves or freeing them.

I could see how the Ambossans had hardened their hearts to our humanity. They convinced themselves that we do not feel as they do, so that they do not have to feel anything for us. It's very convenient and lucrative for them.

If someone asks for their freedom, you got to give it to them; otherwise you become their jailer.

she'd seen people stand on the shoulders of hate and pluck money and power from the very top shelves of the universe.

Don't you know sugar is brown first? White folks couldn't stand the fact that something so sweet shared the same color as the people who cut the cane, slopped the hogs and picked the cotton. So they bleached it to resemble them, and now they done gone and fooled everybody. You included.

Inequality, corruption, oligarchy, and authoritarianism are inseparable. They must be understood as part of the same system, and fought in the same way.

Als ob Gewalt jemals etwas anderes ausgerichtet hätte als Zerstörung. Ihr glaubt, wenn ihr euch auf die Hinterbeine stellt, dann gibt es das Paradies auf Erden. Aber ich sage euch: So macht man kein Paradies, so macht man das Chaos.

First of all, they came to take the gypsies and I was happy because they pilfered. Then they came to take the Jews and I said nothing, because they were unpleasant to me. Then they came to take homosexuals, and I was relieved, because they were annoying me. Then they came to take the Communists, and I said nothing because I was not a Communist. One day they came to take me, and there was nobody left to protest. Bertold Brecht, inspired by Emil Gustav Friedrich Martin Niemöller