Quotes About Oppression

Unhealthy societies quashed truth-tellers, hid facts, and curtailed debate (often at the end of a sword or rifle). Information, as the saying went, wanted to be free.

Of course, Admiral Ackbar is a student of history, and in many cases smaller, lesser forces have outmatched and outfoxed their betters. The Ghostfinder fleet versus the Sith armada. The Mandalorians versus the Grand Army of the Republic. And, of course, the Rebel Alliance versus the Empire. History

The fruit of too much liberty is slavery.

Give your oppressed masses a sense of virtue accumulated through suffering, and stand back and marvel as they censor themselves and act in a decent, God-fearing, law-abiding and—best of all—long-suffering manner, in order to feel ethically superior to you. I've

The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands . . . is the definition of tyranny. —James Madison

what I really want to shout, and want in big letters on that grave, too, is FUCK YOU ALL. Don't all women feel the same? The only difference is how much we know we feel it, how in touch we are with our fury. We're all furies, except the ones who are too damned foolish

They took our land, then they took our water. But Hawaiians lost more then that. The haole took away our pride. They called us 'natives'. They told us our language was no good, that our gods were evil.

My feet are killing me. I knew somebody who had feet like that. They'd walk all over him. Archie Kashanian was his name. He used to wake up with footprints all over his chest, all over his face. It was the death of him, finally.

That's not fair! Life's not fair, Kaspar. You know that. You had a slave for — how long? Twelve years. Did you treat him 'fairly'? No, of course not. You beat him when you were in a bad mood, because it made you feel better, and when you felt better you beat him some more.

We cannot believe, we men, that power will ever reside happily in the body of a woman, unless that power is a male child. Not true power. The power must be in male hands, God-given. That's what our fathers tell us, idiots that they are.

Racial prejudice rotted one's faculties.

The capacity to suffer. Elwood--all the Nickel boys--existed in the capacity. Breathed in it, ate in it, dreamed in it. That was their lives now. Otherwise they would have perished. The beatings, the rapes, the unrelenting winnowing of themselves. They endured. But to love those who would have destroyed them? To make that leap? We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will and we will still love you.

The music stopped. The circle broke. Sometimes a slave will be lost in a brief eddy of liberation. In the sway of a sudden reverie among the furrows or while untangling the mysteries of an early morning dream. In the middle of a song on a warm Sunday night. Then it comes, always - the overseer's cry, the call to work, the shadow of the master, the reminder that she is only a human being for a tiny moment across the eternity of her servitude.

White man trying to kill you slow every day, and sometimes trying to kill you fast. Why make it easy for him? That was one kind of work you could say no to.

Throw us in jail, and we will still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and, as difficult as it is, we will still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities after midnight hours, and drag us out onto some wayside road, and beat us and leave us half-dead, and we will still love you. But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer, and one day we will win our freedom.

was like one of those Negroes Dr. King spoke of in his letter from jail, so complacent and sleepy after years of oppression that they had adjusted to it and learned to sleep in it as their only bed.

This nation shouldn't exist, if there is any justice in the world, for its foundations are murder, theft, and cruelty. Yet here we are.

All men are created equal, unless we decide you are not a man.

There are big forces that want to keep the Negro down, like Jim Crow, and there are small forces that want to keep you down, like other people, and in the face of all those things, the big ones and the smaller ones, you have to stand up straight and maintain your sense of who you are.

There will be no redemption because the men who run this place do not want redemption. They want to be as near to hell as they can.

He had met this sort of white man before, earnest and believing what came out of their mouths. The veracity of their words was another matter, but at least they believed them. The southern white man was spat from the loins of the devil and there was no way to forecast his next evil act.

In America the quirk was that people were things. Best to cut your losses on an old man who won't survive a trip across the ocean. A young buck from strong tribal stock got customers into a froth. A slave girl squeezing out pups was like a mint, money that bred money. If you were a thing—a cart or a horse or a slave—your value determined your possibilities.

What had started it, the mess this week? A white cop shot an unarmed black boy three times and killed him. Good old American know-how on display: We do marvels, we do injustice, and our hands were always busy.

In death the negro became a human being. Only then was he the white man's equal.