Quotes About Oppression

Im Krieg machen die Starken die Schwachen zu Sklaven, im Frieden machen die Reichen die Armen zu Sklaven.

Llevamos cadenas, aunque nadie las vea, y somos esclavos, aunque los hombres nos llamen libres

The evolution of man is slow. The injustice of men is great.

There are three kinds of despots.  There is the despot who tyrannises over the body.  There is the despot who tyrannises over the soul.  There is the despot who tyrannises over the soul and body alike.  The first is called the Prince.  The second is called the Pope.  The third is called the People.  The Prince may be cultivated. 

The hand upon his shoulder weighed like a hand of lead. It was intolerable. It seemed to crush him.

We have chains, though no eye beholds them; and are slaves, though men call us free.

We were at the home base of the holy man who encouraged presidents to drop bombs on poor Cockroaches in far-off villages in Vietnam

I was stopped in the dense Soviet wood by bandits who called themselves my judges.

Only in Russia poetry is respected – it gets people killed. Is there anywhere else where poetry is so common a motive for murder?

Only in Russia poetry is respected--it gets people killed.

Real misfortune is not just a matter of being hungry and thirsty; it is a matter of knowing that there are people who want you to be hungry and thirsty

It isn't those who are taken by force, put in chains, and sold as slaves who are the real slaves; it is those who will accept it, morally and physically.

For a moment, the passage of the locomotive would calm the torment in their hearts, because their fellowship with the machine was deep and strong; stronger than the barriers which separated them for their employers, stronger even than the obstacle which until now had been insurmountable--the color of their skin

He looked like a Dictator on the point of starting a purge.

It's a hell for the poor, in New York. An iron, grinding city. It frightens you. It's so big and hard and cruel. It takes the fight out of you.

She was oppressed by the eternal melancholy miracle of the fat man who does not realize that he has become fat.

What it all boils down to, if you follow me, is that certain blokes — me, for example — have got much too much of the ready, while certain other blokes — the martyred proletariat, for instance — haven't got enough. This makes it fairly foul for the m.p., if you see what I mean.

He who has nothing—it has been said many times—has nothing to lose but his chains.

My duty moves along with my song: I am I am not: that is my destiny. I exist not if I do not attend to the pain of those who suffer: they are my pains. For I cannot be without existing for all, for all who are silent and oppressed, I come from the people and I sing for them: my poetry is song and punnishment.

Preguntaréis por qué su poesía no nos habla del sueño, de las hojas, de los grandes volcanes de su país natal? Venid a ver la sangre por las calles, venid a ver la sangre por las calles, venid a ver la sangre por las calles!

Rise up with me against the organisation of misery.

Contra los indios todas las armas se usaron con generosidad: el disparo de carabina, el incendio de sus chozas, y luego, en forma más paternal, se empleó la ley y el alcohol.

We se that [anguish] is the way that capitalism rids itself of those mentalities that could prove hostile to it in the class struggle

Dejé de ser niño porque comprendí que a mi pueblo no le permitieron la vida y le negaron la sepultura.