Quotes About Oppression

...the greatest political problem facing the world today is...how to curb the oppressive power of government, how to keep it within reasonable bounds.

Slavery, properly so called, is the establishment of a right which gives to one man such a power over another as renders him absolute master of his life and fortune.

If power corrupts, the reverse is also true; persecution corrupts the victims though perhaps in subtler and more tragic ways.

Fight the power that be. Fight the power.

It's human nature to abuse power, no matter who you are.

The Lizard Cage by Karen Connelly.

against which all the force and artifice of tyranny will never be able to prevail. General

Peace without justice is tyranny.

Any appeasement of tyranny is treason to this republic and to the democratic ideal.

Outside that periphery in the middle eighties, America was boiling her melting pot. The exploited millions of Europe were pouring into the United States, splashing over the rim of the cauldron into economic oppression—if not social—as harsh and cruel as that they left in Europe save for this: the opportunity to rise, to climb out of the hell into which they were dumped.

One Law for the Lion and Ox is Oppression

You cannot have Liberty in this world without what you call Moral Virtue & you cannot have Moral Virtue without the Slavery of that half of the Human Race who hate what you call Moral Virtue

One Law for the Lion & Ox is Oppression.

Prisons are built with stones of Law. Brothels with the bricks of religion.

In every cry of every man,In every infant's cry of fear,In every voice, in every ban,The mind-forg'd manacles I hear.

Yet, feeling his way, starting by the passive opposition of small thefts, stealing sausage ends and crusts of bread when Signora Squeers was asleep, he (Casanova) progressed until he arrived at the thought " that it was ridiculous to be oppressed

Hurrah for revolution and more cannon-shot!A beggar upon horseback lashes a beggar on foot.Hurrah for revolution and cannon come again!The beggars have changed places, but the lash goes on.

Much did I rage when young,Being by the world oppressed,But now with flattering tongueIt speeds the parting guest.

But the most interesting of all slave maladies was what Cartwright chose to call "drapetomania," the disease that made blacks want to run away from slavery.

A poor man might count for very little, but he was still free and white, which at least made him better than a free black or a slave, and in a society deeply dominated by class and caste, that was something worth fighting for.

Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungsReceive our air, that moment they are free!They touch our country, and their shackles fall.

Stalin never forgot or forgave. He once told a Russian writer that Ivan the Terrible had not been ruthless enough because he left too many enemies alive.

Truth crushed to earth shall rise again.

Can anything be imagined more abhorrent to every sentiment of generosity and justice, than the law which arms the rich with the legal right to fix, by assize, the wages of the poor? If this is not slavery, we have forgotten its definition. Strike the right of associating for the sale of labor from the privileges of a freeman, and you may as well bind him to a master, or ascribe him to the soil.