Quotes About Oppression

Shall we weep for all the innocent, all martyrs, all children, the lowly as well as the exalted? I agree to that. But in that case, as I have told you, we must go back further than '93, and our tears must begin before Louis XVII. I will weep with you over the children of kings, provided that you will weep with me over the children of the people.

He set out for Toulon. He arrived there, after a journey of twenty-seven days, on a cart, with a chain on his neck. At Toulon he was clothed in the red cassock. All that had constituted his life, even to his name, was effaced; he was no longer even Jean Valjean; he was number 24,601.

The sins of women and children, domestic servants and the weak, the poor and the ignorant, are the sins of the husbands and fathers, the masters, the strong and the rich and the educated.

Yet internally, poverty, the proletariat, wages, education

The faults of women, children and servants,' he said, 'and of the weak, the poor and the ignorant, are the faults of husbands, fathers and masters, and of the strong, the rich and the learned.

Men had only touched him to bruise him. Every contact with them had been a blow. Never, since his infancy, since the days of his mother, of his sister, had he ever encountered a friendly word and a kindly glance. From suffering to suffering, he had gradually arrived at the conviction that life is a war; and that in this war he was the conquered. He had no other weapon than his hate. He resolved to whet it in the galleys and to bear it away with him when he departed.

So long as there shall exist, by virtue of law and custom, decrees of damnation pronounced by society, artificially creating hells amid the civilization of earth, and adding the element of

In every place where man is ignorant and despairing, in every place where woman is sold for bread, wherever the child suffers for lack

He was no longer Jean Valjean, but No. 24601.

Les galères ! Ah ! oui, plutôt mille fois la mort, plutôt l'échafaud que le bagne, plutôt le néant que l'enfer ; plutôt livrer mon cou au couteau de Guillotin qu'au carcan de la chiourme ! Les galères, juste ciel !

Despots play their part in the works of thinkers. The writer doubles and trebles the power of writing when a ruler imposes silence on the people.

La suprema miseria porge occasione alle oscenità.

They wanted an end to oppression, an end to tyranny, an end to the sword, work for men, instruction for the child, social sweetness for the woman, liberty, equality, fraternity, bread for all, the idea for all, the Edenizing of the world. Progress; and that holy, sweet, and good thing, progress, they claimed in terrible wise, driven to extremities as they were, half naked, club in fist, a roar in their mouths. They were savages, yes; but the savages of civilization.

of all scaffolds, the political one is the most abominable, the most fatal, the most mischievous, the most necessary to extirpate.

La oscuridad es vertiginosa; el hombre necesita claridad; el que se interna en las tinieblas se siente con el corazón oprimido. Cuando la mirada ve oscura, el espíritu ve turbio.

O ódio ao ensino dos filhos do povo era um dogma.

In the early ages, the social edifice rested on three columns, the priest, the king and the headsman. It is a long time since a voice exclaimed, "The gods have departed!" Lately another voice has cried, "The kings have departed!" It is now full time that a third voice shall be raised to say, "The executioner must go!

On dit que l'esclavage a disparu de la civilisation européenne. C'est une erreur. Il existe toujours, mais il ne pèse plus que sur la femme, et il s'appelle prostitution.

A guerra civil? O que há a dizer? Mas haverá uma guerra estrangeira? Toda a guerra entre homens, não é a guerra entre irmãos? (...) Pois bem, a monarquia é o estrangeiro; a opressão é o estrangeiro; o direito divino é o estrangeiro. O despotismo violenta a fronteira moral, como a invasão violenta a fronteira geográfica.

In the deepest recesses of that ancient Paris of the poor and destitute which lay hidden beneath the brilliance of the rich and fortunate Paris, there was to be heard the sombre growling of the masses: a fearful and awe-inspiring voice in which were mingled the snarl of animals and the words of God, a terror to the faint hearted and a warning to the wise, coming at once from the depths, like the roaring of a lion, and from the heights like the voice of thunder.

Tyranny follows the tyrant. Woe to the man who leaves behind a shadow that bears his form.

Per distruggere la parola scritta bastano una torcia e un turco. Per distruggere la parola edificata occorre una rivoluzione sociale, una rivoluzione del globo.

Let's fight, ye gods and little fishes! I've had enough of despotism.

La galera fa il galeotto.