Quotes About Oppression

more and more ferocious to devour the South.

Tis not altogether improbable, that when the nation become heartily sick of their debts, and are cruelly oppressed by them, some daring projector may arise with visionary schemes for their discharge. And as public credit will begin, by that time, to be a little frail, the least touch will destroy it, as happened in France; and in this manner it will die of the doctor. David Hume, 'Of Public Credit', 1752

The provinces, long oppressed by the ministers of the republic, sighed for the government of a single person, who would be the master, not the accomplice, of those petty tyrants. The people of Rome, viewing, with a secret pleasure, the humiliation of the aristocracy, demanded only bread and public shows; and were supplied with both by the liberal hand of Augustus. The

Here, though, the police do not exist to protect and serve. They exist to maintain terror through unimaginable atrocity.

The free men in Manchester knew the tenuousness of their lives and always endeavored to be upstanding; they knew they were slaves with just another title.

It ain't right, Celeste said. It just ain't right to go and do what they bought you for. Why make it easy?

Keller hesitated. "I suppose," he said pleasantly, "that any system that gives power to a particular class will tempt that class to exploit the powerless. It seems to be human nature.

It is perhaps the great discomfort of those trying to silence the world to discover that we have voices sealed inside our heads, voices that with each passing day, grow even louder than the clamor of the world outside.

Manman tells papa, you cannot let them kill somebody just because you are afraid. Papa says, oh yes, you can let them kill somebody because you are afraid. They are the law. It is their right.

If they come into a house and there is a son and a mother there, they hold a gun to their heads. They make the son sleeps with his mother. If it is a daughter and a father, they do the same thing.

The soldiers can come and do with us what they want. That makes papa feel weak, she says. He gets angry when he feels weak.

Nineteen Thirty-Seven

There was the stench of kerosene and burning tires wafting through the air. It was only a matter of time before the rubber smell would be replaced with that of flesh.

Freedom is a passing thing, a man said. Someone can always come and snatch it away.

the police in the city really knew how to hold human beings trapped in cages, even women like Manman who was accused of having wings of flame.

But no one has ever gone from slavery to freedom with the slaveholders cheering them on, nor contributed significantly to the evolution of our species by working a forty-hour week, nor achieved any significant accomplishment by taking refuge in cynicism.

If such a state is to be established, it can only be established over our dead bodies.

It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners.

The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience.

The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants

Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.

A slave begins by demanding justice and ends by wanting to wear a crown.

Every insubordinate person, when he rises up against oppression, reaffirms thereby the solidarity of all men.

I regard class differences as contrary to justice and, in the last resort, based on force.