Quotes About Oppression

Yeah, things are better for blacks and women and gays, but it was the blacks and women and gays that did it, not fuck-ups like this bunch. Whites and straights came along to give help, all right, after the blacks said 'enough' and got their heads busted, and it's the same for the gays and the women. The whites and straights, they control things, and they could have changed it anytime.

All the best elements of patriotism—the spirit of sacrifice, the desire for justice and protection for the oppressed—sprouted in the soil of chivalry. It is in the classic country of chivalry

The worst kind of tyrant was the one who once had been the victim.

I was becoming acutely aware […] that Negroes rarely were allowed to be experts about themselves; others always knew more, wrote or said more, or at least what they said or wrote got around more and certainly was given more credence.

It must be pretty awful for a white man to learn that one of the things wrong with this society is that it is not based on dollars directly or alone, but dollars denied men who are black so dollars can go into the pockets of men who are white. It must make white men ponder a kind of weakness that will make them deny work to black men so that work can be done by men who are white.

The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing.

The women are always the whores; the priests are always the good men who were led astray.

Collars, trench coats or jackboots – uniforms allow us to exercise our cruelty without ever feeling guilt.

It has always astonished me, Georgy Daniilovich, that those who are most repulsed by autocratic or dictatorial rule are among the first to eliminate their enemies once they take on the mantle of power themselves.

Sure the priests ran the country back then and they hated women. Oh my God, they hated women and anything that had to do with women and anything to do with women's bodies or ideas or desires, and any chance that they had to humiliate a woman or bring her down, they would take full advantage of it.

Something must be done. Not just for him but for all the Pierrots out there. The Führer will destroy the whole country if he's not stopped. The whole of Europe. He says that he is illuminating the minds of the German people—but no, he is the darkness at the center of the world.

uniforms allow us to exercise our cruelty without ever feeling guilt.

They used to burn books, you know

It starts in the schoolyard, with small boys fighting among each other. In the 1930s, the Reich found a people to hate. Now, twenty years later, it's us who are hunted down. When they discover one of us, they bring us to a courtroom so the world can hear of our crimes but, really, all they want is to shoot us, hang us, kill us in any way they can. We're all just trying to survive.

They were afraid of them, you see. Frightened of ideas. Frightened of the truth. People still are

The powers that be, the Great Unelected Consciences of the World, didn't approve of what she said and that was the end of her.

Governments rely on threat and trauma to survive. The easiest populace to rule is weak, poor, superstitious, preferably terrified of what tomorrow may bring

Your country, mine, every other country in the world, has the same cause and what it does is, it takes people who don't give a pint of whaledreck for it and sends them off to kill women and children. Yes, it's the cause of every country on earth! And you know what I call that cause? I call it naked stinking greed.

Reason? Justice? The forces that victimized and paralysed him now were those that had created the world. Who was he to contend against them?

It is an unfortunate personal tragedy. However, when compared to the vast ocean of the collective tragedy faced by my people, my illness is merely a pebble. I am deeply sad that I am crippled by this illness, unable to contribute anything substantial towards the alleviation of the immense suffering and oppression of my people.

There has been a reevaluation of our slave philosophy that permitted us to be satisfied with the leftovers at the back door rather than demand a full serving at the family dinner table

Never befriend the oppressed unless you are prepared to take on the oppressor

For somehow this disease inheres in tyranny, never to trust one's friends.

Being a girl sucks because you get harassed and discriminated against.