Quotes About Oppression

We are living in tumultuous times, and our focus should be fighting against the oppression and injustices that are against us - not battling those who are on the same side of seeking justice and peace.

In many places around the world, including Turkey until the 1950s, Muslims didn't have full freedom of religion. Even personal practice was not allowed, and they had to practice in secret.

My friends and family in Turkey could be arrested just for talking to me.

The Turkish government is very famous for hunting down those who oppose Erdogan... I just didn't really want to risk my life by going to Europe where Erdogan's long arms are everywhere.

My father has been targeted for persecution by the Turkish government and its leader, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, because of his association with me.

The history of Chechnya is one of imperialism gone terribly wrong. In the 13th and 14th centuries, Chechens were among the few peoples to fend off Mongol conquerors, but at a terrible cost. Turks, Persians, and Russians sought to seize Chechnya, and it was finally absorbed into the Russian Empire in 1859.

Cruel leaders are replaced only to have new leaders turn cruel.

When my ancestors came from Africa, they were shackled by our neck, our wrists, and our ankles in steel chains. I've turned those steel chains into gold to symbolize the fact that I'm still a slave, only my price tag is higher.

What becomes a crime deserving capital punishment when the tables are turned is a matter of small moment when the negro woman is the accusing party.

Who Rebels? Who rises in arms? Rarely the slave, but almost always the oppressor turned slave.

The Negro was freed and turned loose as a penniless, landless, naked, ignorant laborer. Ninety-nine per cent were field hands and servants of the lowest class.

I believe this system of mass incarceration would have Dr. King turning in his grave. There's no doubt in my mind that Dr. King would be doing everything in his power to build a movement to end mass incarceration in the United States; a movement for education, not incarceration.

Even when folks are hitting you over the head, you can't stop marching. Even when they're turning the hoses on you, you can't stop.

No authoritarian leader cedes power easily or turns it over to bodies he cannot control.

Our Palestinian brethren continue to be slaughtered at the hands of Israelis while the world turns the other cheek.

We've come into the world of '1984,' but it turns out to be '1984'-Lite.

A Protestant has seldom any mercy shown him, and a Jew, who turns Christian, is far from being secure.

We thought we'd leave communism behind, and everything would turn out fine. But it turns out you can't leave this and become free, because these people don't understand what freedom is.

There is no way I'd have wanted to live in the Twenties. It was really crap for women.

The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line: the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea.

The real passion of the twentieth century is servitude.

The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.

The twentieth century had produced a literature in Ireland that kept a tense distance from the sources of faith - and for good reason. Irish writing had suffered a terrible censorship in the twentieth century.

Twenty-five million people who live in North Korea are denied freedom in every respect of their lives. In short, they are hostages. Imagine 25 million hostages.