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Oppression Quotes

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Oppression Quotes

“...it is not really the difference the oppressor fears so much as the similarity. He fears he will discover in himself the same aches, the same longings as those of the people he has shit on... . He fears he will have to change his life once he has seen himself in the bodies of the people he has called different.”

FeminismOppression
Book:Esta Puente, Mi Espalda: Voces De Mujeres Tercermundistas En Los Estados Unidos
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“As women, we have been taught either to ignore our differences, or to view them as causes for separation and suspicion rather than as forces for change. Without community there is no liberation, only the most vulnerable and temporary armistice between an individual and her oppression. But community must not mean a shedding of our differences, nor the pathetic pretense that these differences do not exist. Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society’s definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference — those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are Black, who are older — know that survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to stand alone, unpopular and sometimes reviled, and how to make common cause with those others identified as outside the structures in order to define and seek a world in which we can all flourish. It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths. For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master’s house as their only source of support.”

CommunityFeminismOppressionLiberationDifference
Book:Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
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“I have suckled the wolf's lip of anger and I have used it for illumination, laughter, protection, fire when there was no fire, no food, no sisters, no quarter. We are not goddesses or matriarchs or edifices of forgiveness; we are not fiery fingers of judgement or instruments of flagellation; we are women forced back always upon our woman's power.”

FeminismForgivenessOppression
Book:Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
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“If you advocate for the censorship of speech that does not expressly incite violence, limit your own vocabulary to a set number of words for one week. Cease to use several common words or phrases you often use and watch as your ability to communicate and think diminish. Now do you still want censorship knowing it is not just the limiting of speech but thought? If you do, you may wish to look inward about why oppressive impulses come so easily when you disagree with others.”

SpeechThoughtOppressionCensorship
Author:Carmine Savastano
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“How is it possible to live? Life is so hard?’ ‘You must be harder than life, Firdaus. Life is very hard. The only people who really live are those who are harder than life itself.’ ‘But you are not hard, Sharifa, so how do you manage to live?’ ‘I am hard, terribly hard, Firdaus.’ ‘No, you are gentle and soft.’ ‘My skin is soft, but my heart is cruel, and my bite deadly.’ ‘Like a snake?’ ‘Yes, exactly like a snake. Life is a snake. They are the same, Firdaus. If the snake realises you are not a snake, it will bite you. And if life knows you have no sting, it will devour you.”

LifeWomenCourageDeterminationBraveryOppressionOvercoming Fear
Book:Woman at Point Zero
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“I could reply. I could tell him that a metaphor is inadequate in the face of a bloodbath. That a Platonic inclination for dying doesn't balance out the serious decision to kill. That through the ages there has never been a great historical infamy committed for which there couldn't be found a symbol just as big, to justify it. That, in consequence, we would do well to pay attention to great certainties, to great invocations, to the great 'droughts' and 'rains'. That the temper of our most violent outbursts might benefit from a shade less enthusiasm. I could reply. But what good would it do? I have a simple, resigned, inexplicable sensation that everything that is happening is in the normal order of things and that I am awaiting a season that will come and pass -- because it has come and passed before.”

OppressionFutilityInevitabilityImpotence
Book:For Two Thousand Years
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“Not that I had any intention of accosting him to propose any practical agreement. That would have demanded on Laura's part a degree of devotion, of understanding, a detached view of the purely animal act of love, such as could not be expected of so young a woman who was so subject conventions of comportment in a society that had always shown itself incapable of differentiating between love and sexuality.”

LoveSexualityOppressionDeclineImpotenceWomen And MenOlder Man Younger Girl
Book:Au-delà de cette limite votre ticket n'est plus valable
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“The unnatural and increasingly rapid growth of the Feeble-Minded and Insane classes, coupled as it is with a steady restriction among all the thrifty, energetic and superior stocks constitutes a national and race danger which it is impossible to exaggerate. Winston Churchill in a letter to Prime Minister Asquith, advocating the forced sterilisation of disabled people”

DiscriminationOppressionDisabilityEugenicsAbleismForced Sterilisation
Author:Winston S. Churchill
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“Civil disobedience, as I put it to the audience, was not the problem, despite the warnings of some that it threatened social stability, that it led to anarchy. The greatest danger, I argued, was civil obedience, the submission of individual conscience to governmental authority. Such obedience led to the horrors we saw in totalitarian states, and in liberal states it led to the public's acceptance of war whenever the so-called democratic government decided on it... In such a world, the rule of law maintains things as they are. Therefore, to begin the process of change, to stop a war, to establish justice, it may be necessary to break the law, to commit acts of civil disobedience, as Southern black did, as antiwar protesters did.”

JusticeOppressionRule Of LawCivil DisobedienceAcquiescenceDangers Of Obedience
Book:You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times
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“Racism has permeated psychology and psychiatry from its genesis. Early clinicians came from white, European backgrounds, and used their culture's social norms as the basis for what being healthy looked like. It was a very narrow and oppressive definition, which assumed that being genteel, well-dressed, well-read, and white were the marks of humanity, and that anyone who deviated from that standard was not a person, but an animal in need of being tamed.”

RacismPrejudiceOppressionBiasAutismPsychiatryBlacknessWhitenessNeurodiversity
Book:Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity
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“Why You Must Speak Your Name (Naskaristana 2593) You know why I have to mention my name over and over, in as many places as I can, even though the name is not important - it's because my name represents every people ever trampled beneath the feet by the half-educated apes out to spread "civilization" - my name represents the congolese, my name represents the palestinians, my name represents the sikhs, my name represents the muslims, my name represents each and every human being incarcerated for merely existing. So I say again, the name is not important, yet you must speak your name, because every time a human speaks their name, an ape loses their footing in history.”

OppressionGenocideColonialismPersecutionDecolonizationEthnic CleansingMarginalizedHuman Rights ViolationErasureSilenced
Book:Hazrat-e Humanity: The Uncultured Polyglot
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“But there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled by oppression. There comes a time when people get tired of being plunged into the abyss of exploitation and nagging injustice. The story of Montgomery is the story of 50,000 such Negroes who were willing to substitute tired feed for tired souls, and walk the streets of Montgomery until the walls of segregation were finally battered by the forces of justice.”

JusticeRacismInjusticeOppressionExploitationAfrican AmericansBlacksSegregationAlabamaMontgomery
Book:Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
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“Sonnet of National Obligation When a nation is founded on terrorism, It has an obligation for self-improvement. If admitting the past hurts your feelings, Better remain in your mother's basement. If we really look for filth and atrocities, We'll find it in the history of every nation. The real problem is not the history, But the absolute denial of its admission. No nation can become civilized, Till it steps up to right the wrongs. Admit the errors of our ancestors, And pledge to never repeat those harms. Humanity begins with admitting inhumanity. Lo we are the shield against further atrocity.”

SlaveryInjusticeOppressionAccountabilityAmerican HistorySonnetInhumanityNation BuildingAtrocityNation Builder
Book:Hometown Human: To Live for Soil and Society
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“Of course, during the centuries the justice was always a rather elastic term, but always till now and “everywhere the justice is the same thing – the usefully for the stronger” (Plato, The Republic).”

PoliticalUnitySocialismOppressionDictatorshipCivil SocietyDemocratsPolitical SystemScientific SocialismClass Inequality
Book:Socialism Is Dead! Long Live Socialism!: The Marx Code-Socialism with a Human Face
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“Ignore the voice that scorns and ridicules to ensure it does not mold you. Stifling subtleties like these, if unchecked, are oppressive. Freedom is a love supreme birthright, not a privilege to be governed by any other.”

LoveVoiceFreedomAbusePrivilegeOppressionRidiculeGovernanceBirthrightPunishEnslaveStifle
Book:From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence
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“One of the hardest lessons I have learned social justice work is that, even when oppressive systems are confronted and dismantled, those responsible will- more often than not- take hold of the narrative to mitigate responsibility. As a result, the oppressed still tend to bear the brunt of the fallout. And what makes that even harder to process is that many people who would declare themselves "allies to the cause" will passively or actively buy into that false narrative because it is far easier and less costly than to walk in genuine solidarity. I don't say this so that people will feel hopeless about their commitments to justice. Quite the opposite. If you know that this happens, you won't be as crushed when it does.”

JusticeSocial JusticeOppressionSolidarityGaslightingAllyshipTransformative Justice
Author:Jamie Arpin-Ricci
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“People either build a castle or a dungeon. The former by their virtues, pull people into positive edifices with gainful impression. The later by their vices, push people into negative huts with painful oppression.”

PeoplePainLeadershipLeaderVirtueSelf ImprovementGainsFood For ThoughtPainfulVicesIsraelmore AyivorPersonal DevelopmentGoodHealImpressionOppressionLeadersImpressBadManipulateCastlesMisleadKillOppressorsDungeonsEdificeVirtuesGainViceLead PeopleCastlePushGood Or BadManipulatorOppressorPainsOppressOppressiveDungeonMisleadersManipulationsManipulatorsPain And GainGainfulMisleaderEdifices
Book:Leaders' Ladder
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“No country can develop without science - it will be destroyed by its neighbors. Without arts and general culture, the country loses its capacity for self-criticism, begins to encourage faulty tendencies, starts to constantly spawn hypocrites and scum, develops consumerism and conceit in its citizens, and eventually again becomes a victim of its more sensible neighbors. Persecute bookworms all you like, prohibit science, and destroy art, but sooner or later you'll be forced to think better of it, and with much gnashing of teeth open the way for everything that is so hated by the power-hungry dullards and blockheads.”

OppressionBookwormsLudditesAnti ScienceAnti Art
Book:Hard to Be a God
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“« Plus personne ne pouvait dire "Allahou akbar" sur le sol de l’Andalousie, cette terre où, pendant huit siècles, la voix du muezzin avait appelé les fidèles à la prière. Plus personne ne pouvait réciter la Fatiha sur la dépouille de son père. Du moins en public, car ces musulmans convertis par la force refusaient de renier leur foi. »”

FaithSpiritualityHistoryIdentityIslamMemoryResistanceOppressionHeritageAndalusia
Book:Leo The African
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