Quotes About Oppression

There are things that I love in Iranian cinema and things that I don't. In Iranian cinema, you have to use metaphor because you are living under a dictatorship.

The feminine mystique has succeeded in burying millions of American women alive.

and we might as well give up, because Standard Oil owns everything. He said they own Standard Brands, which in turn own Safeway Stores, which in turn own Pacific Fruit and Produce, which in turn has mortgages on all the farms. He says they are responsible for all the wars and that we are all just slaves being allowed to exist until the time comes when we can go into the trenches to protect Standard Oil.

To remain silent would be to disconnect from her own experience, to swallow and internalize her own oppression. The cost of silence is too high.

We need to acknowledge that an important part of interrupting the cycle of oppression is constant reeducation, and then sharing what we learn with the next generation.

We are better able to resist the negative impact of oppressive messages when we see them coming than when they are invisible to us.

Can people of color be racist?" I reply, "The answer depends on your definition of racism." If one defines racism as racial prejudice, the answer is yes. People of color can and do have racial prejudices. However, if one defines racism as a system of advantage based on race, the answer is no.

Using the same logic, I reserve the word sexist for men. Though women can and do have gender-based prejudices, only men systematically benefit from sexism.)

Hitler and Mussolini even went so far as to persecute Esperanto speakers.

Biologically, there is actually no such thing as race – nothing in terms of skin colour, facial features, hair type, bone structure, or anything else that is a defining quality among peoples. And yet look how many people have been enslaved or hated or lynched or deprived of fundamental rights through history because of the colour of their skin.

What is the one aspect of this broken world that, when you see it, touch it, get near it, you just can't stand? Very likely, that firestorm of frustration reflects your holy discontent, a reality so troubling that you are thrust off the couch and into the game. It's during these defining times when your eyes open to the needs surrounding you and your heart hungers to respond that you hear God say, 'I feel the same way about this problem. Now, let's go solve it together!

When I hear from people that religion doesn't hurt anything, I say, really? Well besides wars, the Crusades, the Inquisitions, 9-11, ethnic cleansing, the suppression of women, the suppression of homosexuals, fatwas, honor killings, suicide bombings, arranged marriages to minors, human sacrifice, burning witches, and systematic sex with children, I have a few little quibbles. And I forgot blowing up girl schools in Afghanistan

You can be up to your boobies in white satin, with gardenias in your hair and no sugar cane for miles, but you can still be working on a plantation.

Justice without force is powerless; force without justice is tyrannical.

La giustizia è soggetta a discussione, la forza è molto riconosciuta e indiscussa. Così non si è potuto dare la forza alla giustizia perché la forza ha contraddetto la giustizia e ha affermato che solo lei era giusta. E così, non potendo ottenere che ciò che è giusto sia forte, si è fatto sì che ciò che è forte sia giusto

What does it say about this "God" that, even though he is "all-powerful" and could easily have prevented the Israelites from being enslaved in the first place, and then subsequently could have freed them once they were enslaved, he would instead choose to intentionally prolong the suffering of both the Israelites and the Egyptians merely so that he could show off his—powers? Is that God any kind of God to uphold or believe in?

Some times I think this whole world Is one big prison yeard Some of us are prisoners The rest of us are guards

Come you masters of war You that build all the guns You that build the death planes You that build the big bombs You that hide behind walls You that hide behind desks I just want you to know I can see through your masks.

The P'lice Department hounded him, they called him Mr. Smith. They got him on conspiracy, they were never quite sure who with.

Without freedom of speech, I might be in the swamp.

I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more.

In the wild cathedral evening the rain unraveled tales for the disrobed faceless forms of no position. Tolling for the tongues with no place to bring their thoughts - all down in taken-for-granted situations. Tolling for the deaf an' blind, tolling for the mute, and the mistreated mateless mother, the mistitled prostitute, for the misdemeanor outlaw, chained an' cheated by pursuit. And we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

The word freedom lost much of its strength when one's back was weighted down with fieldwork.

When I was a child, to call someone 'black' was an insult, a curse word, something that made you fight. But to me it contains all of the history of oppression and resistance, of being close to the soil and the sky, of plain speaking. Of The Journey.