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Oppression Quotes

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Oppression Quotes

“Thus, cases of injustice, and oppression, and tyranny, and the most extravagant bigotry, are in constant occurrence among us every day. It is the custom to trumpet forth much wonder and astonishment at the chief actors therein setting at defiance so completely the opinion of the world; but there is no greater fallacy; it is precisely because they do consult the opinion of their own little world that such things take place at all, and strike the great world dumb with amazement.”

WorldLittlesActorsWonderOpinionCasesGreaterWords Of WisdomConstantInjusticeStrikesTyrannySettingOppressionSettingsChiefsDumbBigotryCustomsDefianceTrumpetsFallacyExtravagantAmazementAstonishmentInjustice And Oppression
Book:Nicholas Nickleby: Easyread Edition
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“Conventional opinions fit so comfortably into the dominant paradigm as to be seen not as opinions but as statements of fact, as 'the nature of things.' The very efficacy of opinion manipulation rests on the fact that we do not know we are being manipulated. The most insidious forms of oppression are those that so insinuate themselves into our communication universe and the recesses of our minds that we do not even realize they are acting upon us.”

KnowsMindFactsFormPoliticalUniverseRealizingActingOpinionCommunicationFitStatementsOppressionManipulationConventionalDominantParadigmInsidiousEfficacyRecess
Book:The Culture Struggle
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“We need to stop playing Privilege or Oppression Olympics because we'll never get anywhere until we find more effective ways of talking through difference. We should be able to say, “This is my truth,” and have that truth stand without a hundred clamoring voices shouting, giving the impression that multiple truths cannot coexist.”

WayNeedsGivingShouldAbleVoiceDifferencesTalkingHundredPrivilegeImpressionOppressionMultipleOlympicsShoutingCoexistMy TruthWay Of Talking
Author:Roxane Gay
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“From my membership in all of these groups I have learned that oppression and the intolerance of difference come in all shapes and sizes and colors and sexualities; and that among those of us who share the goals of liberation and a workable future for our children, there can be no hierarchies of oppression.”

ChildrenGoalDifferencesGroupsShareColorShapesOur ChildrenSizeSexualityOppressionLiberationIntoleranceI Have LearnedHierarchyMembership
Author:Audre Lorde
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“Our [Virginia's] act for freedom of religion is extremely applauded. The Ambassadors and ministers of the several nations of Europe resident at this court have asked me copies of it to send to their sovereigns, and it is inserted at full length in several books now in the press; among others, in the new Encyclopédie. I think it will produce considerable good even in those countries where ignorance, superstition, poverty and oppression of body and mind in every form, are so firmly settled on the mass of the people, that their redemption from them can never be hoped.”

PeopleThinkingMindBookCountryBodyFormDiesNationsPovertyAtheismProduceIgnoranceMassEuropeCourtPressesPositive AtheismOppressionRedemptionMinistersLengthCopiesSuperstitionsMind And BodyVirginiaAmbassadorsResidentsFreedom Of Religion
Book:Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies, from the Papers of Thomas Jefferson
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“You ask what I have found and far and wide I go, Nothing but Cromwell's house and Cromwell's murderous crew, The lovers and the dancers are beaten into the clay, And the tall men and the swordsmen and the horsemen where are they?”

MenAsksFoundHouseLoversWideOppressionDancerTallCrewBeatenClayHorsemenCromwellSwordsman
Book:The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition
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“The Greeks by their laws, and the Romans by the spirit of their people, took care to put into the hands of their rulers no such engine of oppression as a standing army. Their system was to make every man a soldier, and oblige him to repair to the standard of his country whenever that was reared. This made them invincible; and the same remedy will make us so.”

PeopleMenMadeCountryHandsCareAgeLawDeathSpiritResponsibilityMilitaryDutyStandardsStandingArmySoldierEvery ManOppressionGreekEnginesRulersRemedyInvincible
Book:Jefferson: Political Writings
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“In the supposedly enlightened eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, parental indifference, child neglect, and raw cruelty appearedamong Europeans of all classes.... In mid-nineteenth- century France, families abandoned their children at the rate of thirty-three thousand a year.... It took sixty years after the criminalization of cruelty to animals for cruelty to children to be made punishable under English law.... Industrialized America added brutalizing child labor to the oppressions of the young.”

YearsChildrenMadeAmericaLawYoungThreeWorkAnimalClassCenturyThousandLaborRateCrueltyOppressionFranceIndifferenceThirtyEnlightenedNeglectAbandonedSixtyNineteenth CenturyParentalAnimal CrueltyChild LaborEnglish Law
Author:Letty Cottin Pogrebin
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“To fight oppression, and to work as best we can for a sane organization of society, we do not have to abandon the state of mind offreedom. If we do that we are letting the same thuggery in by the back door that we are fighting off in front of the house.”

IfsThinkingMindStatesFightingHouseDoorsFrontsOrganizationOppressionThoughtfulAbandonState Of MindSaneFreedom Of SpeechBack Doors
Book:John Dos Passos: the major nonfictional prose
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“... women feel the humiliation of their petty distinctions of sex precisely as the black man feels those of color. It is no palliation of our wrongs to say that we are not socially ostracized, so long as we are politically ostracized as he is not.”

MenFeelsLongSexBlackColorOppressionDistinctionHumiliationPetty
Book:THE HISTORY OF WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE - Complete 6 Volumes (Illustrated): Everything You Need to Know about the Biggest Victory of Women’s Rights and Equality in the United States – Written By the Greatest Social Activists, Abolitionists & Suffragists
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“Coming out, all the way out, is offered more and more as the political solution to our oppression. The argument goes that, if people could see just how many of us there are, some in very important places, the negative stereotype would vanish overnight. ...It is far more realistic to suppose that, if the tenth of the population that is gay became visible tomorrow, the panic of the majority of people would inspire repressive legislation of a sort that would shock even the pessimists among us.”

PeopleIfsWayImportantPoliticalInspireTomorrowGaySolutionsNegativeArgumentMajorityPopulationOppressionVisibleShockMinoritiesRealisticComing OutPanicLegislationStereotypePessimistNegative Stereotypes
Book:Outlander: Short Stories and Essays
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“In the west, Apollo and Dionysus strive for victory. Apollo makes the boundary lines that are civilization but that lead to convention, constraint, oppression. Dionysus is energy unbound, mad, callous, destructive, wasteful. Apollo is law, history, tradition, the dignity and safety of custom and form. Dionysus is the new, exhilarating but rude, sweeping all away to begin again. Apollo is a tyrant, Dionysus is a vandal.”

FormLawEnergyLinesVictoryCivilizationTraditionDignitySafetyMadWestStriveBoundariesOppressionDestructiveCustomsTyrantsConventionsRudeApolloConstraintsSweepingExhilaratingBegin AgainCallousDionysusUnboundVandals
Book:Sexual Personae
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“When one of us dies of cancer, loses her mind, or commits suicide, we must not blame her for her inability to survive an ongoing political mechanism bent on the destruction of that human being. Sanity remains defined simply by the ability to cope with insane conditions.”

MindHumansPoliticalDiesLosesHuman BeingsAbilityConditionsDestructionBlameRemainsSuicideCancerIllnessCommitMental IllnessInsaneOppressionDefinedSanityMechanismBentInabilityOngoing
Book:Massacre of the Dreamers: Essays on Xicanisma
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“A central tenet of modern feminist thought has been the assertion that "all women are oppressed." This assertion implies that women share a common lot, that factors like class, race, religion, sexual preference, etc. do not create a diversity of experience that determines the extent to which sexism will be an oppressive force in the lives of individual women.”

Has BeensIndividualForceCommonRaceClassShareModernDiversityDetermineFeministFactorsOppressionEtcSexismOppressedPreferenceAssertion
Book:Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center
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“... some of my people could have been left [in Africa] and are living there. And I can't understand them and they don't know me and I don't know them because all we had was taken away from us. And I became kind of angry; I felt the anger of why this had to happen to us. We were so stripped and robbed of our background, we wind up with nothing.”

PeopleKnowsKindHas BeensI CanHappensLeftFeltTakenWindSlaveryAngryBackgroundsOppressionKnow MeCould Have Been
Author:Fannie Lou Hamer
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“In any conflict area, it is always the women who are the first point of attack. But I think the more they have seen of oppression and violence, they have gotten more brave, more strong, more fearless than they were. You see this refusal to just keep quiet and do as you are told.”

ThinkingFirstsWisdomStrongCommunityLeadershipHistoryViolenceGenerationsQuietConflictEqualSpringAreasBraveHuman RightsIndividualityTerrorismOppressionFearlessEqual RightsRefusalDisobedienceCivil DisobedienceArab Spring
Author:Fatima Bhutto
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“Every relationship of domination, of exploitation, of oppression is by definition violent, whether or not the violence is expressed by drastic means. In such a relationship, dominator and dominated alike are reduced to things- the former dehumanized by an excess of power, the latter by a lack of it. And things cannot love.”

MeanViolenceDefinitionsViolentOppressionFormerLatterExcessExploitationDominationDrastic
Book:Education for Critical Consciousness
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“My philosophy is such that I am not going to vote against the oppressed. I have been oppressed, and so I am always going to have avote for the oppressed, regardless of whether that oppressed is black or white or yellow or the people of the Middle East, or what. I have that feeling.”

PeopleHas BeensPhilosophyFeelingsBlackWhiteMiddleVoteEastOppressionYellowMiddle EastOppressedBlack Or White
Book:Ready from Within: Septima Clark and the Civil Rights Movement
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“Our history in this country dates from the moment that restless men among us became restless under oppression and rose against it . . . Agitation, contentions, ceaseless unrest, constant aspiring -- a race so moved must prevail.”

MenCountryMomentsRaceMovedConstantRoseOppressionRestlessContentionAgitationUnrest
Book:T. Thomas Fortune, the Afro-American Agitator: A Collection of Writings, 1880-1928
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“By identifying with the powerful, the disempowered achieve a measure of safety, at least for a moment. By doing the bidding of those in power, they become a necessary part of the system, useful so long as they serve to contain the stirrings and strivings of the oppressed. By making the rules and values of their oppressor their own, they separate themselves from the rest of their group and, temporarily at least, assuage the pain of their stigmatized status.”

LongMomentsPainValuesPowerfulGroupsAchieveSafetyStriveOppressionOppressedOppressorsStirringIdentifyingBidding
Book:Erotic Wars: What Happened to the Sexual Revolution?
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“I am a man of peace, God knows how I love peace; but I hope I shall never be such a coward as to mistake oppression for peace.”

KnowsMenPeaceMistakeKnow HowOppressionCowardGod Knows
Book:Kossuth in New England: A Full Account of the Hungarian Governor's Visit to Massachusetts ; with Speeches, and the Addresses that Were Made to Him ...
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“I have no faith in our hypocritical, false, hysterical, uneducated and lazy intelligentsia when they suffer and complain: their oppression comes from within. I believe in individual people. I see salvation in discrete individuals, intellectuals and peasants, strewn hither and yon throughout Russia. They have the strength, although there are few of them.”

PeopleBelieveSufferingIndividualI BelieveIntegritySalvationI Believe InComplainingRussiaOppressionLazyIndividualismPeasantsHystericalUneducatedHypocriticalDiscrete
Author:Anton Chekhov
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