Quotes About Oppression

It is only when the oppressed find the oppressor out and become involved in the organized struggle for their liberation that they begin to believe in themselves. This discovery cannot be purely intellectual but must involve action; nor can it be limited to mere activism, but must include serious reflection: only then will it be a praxis.

Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.

Leaders who do not act dialogically, but insist on imposing their decisions, do not organize the people--they manipulate them. They do not liberate, nor are they liberated: they oppress.

The oppressors do not favor promoting the community as a whole, but rather selected leaders.

Without a sense of identity, there can be no real struggle.

Any situation in which some men prevent others from engaging in the process of inquiry is one of violence;… to alienate humans from their own decision making is to change them into objects.

True generosity consists precisely in fighting to destroy the causes which nourish false charity. False charity constrains the fearful and subdued, the "rejects of life," to extend their trembling hands. True generosity lies in striving so that these hands--whether of individuals or entire peoples--need be extended less and less in supplication, so that more and more they become human hands which work and, working, transform the world.

The oppressed, having internalized the image of the oppressor and adopted his guidelines, are fearful of freedom.

The greatest humanistic and historical task of the oppressed: to liberate themselves...

The oppressors do not perceive their monopoly on having more as a privilege which dehumanizes others and themselves. They cannot see that, in the egoistic pursuit of having as a possessing class, they suffocate in their own possessions and no longer are; they merely have.

Dehumanization, although a concrete historical fact, is not a given destiny but the result of an unjust order that engenders violence in the oppressors, which in turn dehumanizes the oppressed

No pedagogy which is truly liberating can remain distant from the oppressed by treating them as unfortunates and by presenting for their emulation models from among the oppressors. The oppressed must be their own example in the struggle for their redemption (Freire, 1970, p. 54).

To glorify democracy and to silence the people is a farce; to discourse on humanism and to negate people is a lie.

Religion is a glorified system of control, or an oppressed system of liberation.

Defiance means you got somebody with power over you.

It is my belief that conscious African American students ought to be in a constant state of rage and in a constant search for ways to channel that rage into freedom struggle.

Man was lost if he went to a usurer, for the interest ran faster than a tiger upon him.

An intelligent, energetic, educated woman cannot be kept in four walls — even satin-lined, diamond-studded walls — without discovering sooner or later that they are still a prison cell." ( America's Medieval Women , Harper's Magazine, August 1938)

Major offenses like this one, as well as minor indignities, or what psychologist Chester Pierce (1995) referred to as micro-aggressions, are so common and pervasive that for many parents, preparing their Black sons for the likelihood of an

And for what Should I show my gratitude! Tyrant of my will o'erthrown,

en cuanto a que son humildes, gente abatida y esclava,

Blacks were "not yet freed from the bonds of injustice," Kennedy observed. They were "not yet freed from social and economic oppression." Then he added an insight that Black abolitionists, civil rights activists, and organizers had advocated for centuries: "And this Nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free.

The Confederacy lost the war but resoundingly won the peace.

You should know I consider police shootings to be lynchings