Quotes About Oppression

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.

Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

How many a rustic Milton has passed by, Stifling the speechless longings of his heart In unremitting drudgery and care! How many a vulgar Cato has compelled His energies, no longer tameless then, To mold a pin, or fabricate a nail!

Time is a tyranny to be abolished.

Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better, whereas enslavement is a certainty of the worst.

Our laws make law impossible; our liberties destroy all freedom; our property is organized robbery; our morality an impudent hypocrisy; our wisdom is administered by inexperienced or mal-experienced dupes; our power wielded by cowards and weaklings; and our honour false in all its points. I am an enemy of the existing order for good reasons.

Poor men's reasons are not heard.

I am 52 years of age. I am a bishop in the Anglican Church, and a few people might be constrained to say that I was reasonably responsible. In the land of my birth, I cannot vote.

Of all the injuries inflicted by racism on people of colour, the most corrosive is the wound within, the internalized racism that leads some victims, at unspeakable cost to their own sense of self, to embrace the values of their oppressors.

I know not whether laws be right, Or whether laws be wrong; All that we know who lie in gaol Is that the wall is strong; And that each day is like a year, A year whose days are long.

If there were any justice in the world, people would be able to fly over pigeons for a change.

We take our shape, it is true, within and against that cage of reality bequeathed us at our birth, and yet it is precisely through our dependence on this reality that we are most endlessly betrayed.

Many are destined to reason wrongly; others, not to reason at all: and others to persecute those who do reason.

It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of society against the injustice of the other part.

Riots are the voices of the unheard.

Big Brother is watching you.

Better that we should die fighting than be outraged and dishonored. Better to die than to live in slavery.

I prefer liberty with danger to peace with slavery.

No man may make another free.

Corrupted freemen are the worst slaves.

They (the blacks) had no right which the white man was bound to respect.

These monstrous views,... these venomous teachings.

Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.

Unlimited power corrupts the possessor; and this I know, that, where law ends, there tyranny begins.