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Oppression Quotes

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Oppression Quotes

“Self-hatred is self-imprisonment. Self-forgiveness is self-liberation. You have the right to suppress yourself, oppress yourself and depress yourself. You have the right to impress yourself too. Feel happy!”

SelfHappinessFreedomLibertySadForgivenessHatredAngerFood For ThoughtIsraelmore AyivorHappyGladUnhappyImpressionOppressionLiberationFreeImpressYourselfImpressiveSuppressionSelf HatredLiberateDepressOppressSuppressImprisonSelf LiberationSelf ImprisonmentCompressDon T Hate Yourself
Book:Daily Drive 365
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“Domination is a relationship, not a condition; it depends on the participation of both parties. Hierarchical power is not just the gun in the policeman's hand; it is just as much the obedience of the ones who act as if it is always pointed at them. It is not just the government and the executives and the armed forces; it extends through society from top to bottom, an interlocking web of control and compliance. Sometimes all it takes to be complicit in the oppression of millions is to die of natural causes.”

GovernmentRelationshipSocietyGunPoliceOppressionExecutivesAnarchyParticipationLaw EnforcementDominationAnarchismArmed ForcesComplianceComplicityCrimethinc
Book:Contradictionary
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“And if it’s not me, it’s someone else. There are a million ways in which the body is stolen from us—debt and interest and data and labour and literal tissue and blood that can be harvested, and affective, sexual, and emotional energy. Capitalists, which clutch and pry and feed, dreaming up ways in which they can make your body not your own, and when the last drop of blood is exhausted they’ll have the audacity to bill you for it.”

BodyDepressionCapitalismLaborMental HealthOppressionAnticapitalism
Book:Coup de Grâce
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“...large technologies such as Google need to be broken up and regulated, because their consolidated power and cultural influence make competition largely impossible. This monopoly in the information sector is a threat to democracy...”

InternetRacismOppressionArtificial IntelligenceGoogleFacebookSystemic RacismAnticapitalismSearch EnginesCritical Librarianship
Book:Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism
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“And there’s one other matter I must raise. The epidemic of domestic sexual violence that lacerates the soul of South Africa is mirrored in the pattern of grotesque raping in areas of outright conflict from Darfur to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and in areas of contested electoral turbulence from Kenya to Zimbabwe. Inevitably, a certain percentage of the rapes transmits the AIDS virus. We don’t know how high that percentage is. We know only that women are subjected to the most dreadful double jeopardy. The point must also be made that there’s no such thing as the enjoyment of good health for women who live in constant fear of rape. Countless strong women survive the sexual assaults that occur in the millions every year, but every rape leaves a scar; no one ever fully heals. This business of discrimination against and oppression of women is the world’s most poisonous curse. Nowhere is it felt with greater catastrophic force than in the AIDS pandemic. This audience knows the statistics full well: you’ve chronicled them, you’ve measured them, the epidemiologists amongst you have disaggregated them. What has to happen, with one unified voice, is that the scientific community tells the political community that it must understand one incontrovertible fact of health: bringing an end to sexual violence is a vital component in bringing an end to AIDS. The brave groups of women who dare to speak up on the ground, in country after country, should not have to wage this fight in despairing and lonely isolation. They should hear the voices of scientific thunder. You understand the connections between violence against women and vulnerability to the virus. No one can challenge your understanding. Use it, I beg you, use it.”

ViolenceHealthAidsDiscriminationOppressionIsolationSexismSouth AfricaMisogynyAfricaUnited NationsDomestic ViolenceSexual AbuseRapeHivViolence Against WomenKenyaSexual AssaultRape CultureZimbabweSudanDarfurMarital RapeDemocratic Republic Of The Congo
Author:Stephen Lewis
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“On a global scale, the international diaspora of Filipinos must be seen in the context of our search for a home. For many, the economic conditions of the Philippines can hardly be called home—pushing hundreds of thousands of men and women (primarily) to seek economic relief elsewhere in order to provide a home for the families they left behind in the Philippines. This diaspora must also be seen in the historical context of our imbalance as a result of colonialism/imperialism and the displacement of the self through negation by the master’s narratives. That this diaspora is perceived by the Philippine government as its own version of “foreign aid” is symptomatic of a consciousness that remains uncritical of its marginal situatedness. The paradox of the “colonized taking care of the colonizer” is being played out in hospitals and convalescent homes, where Filipino nurses abound; in Europe and in the United States, where Filipino nannies and domestic workers are taking care of other people’s children It is evident in Japan’s Filipino entertainers and in Denmark and Australia’s Filipino mail-order brides, who provide caretaking services, especially to men. This is the most stark and depressing legacy of colonization as a patriarchal legacy—the exploitation of women”

OppressionColonisationIntergenerational Trauma
Author:Leny Strobel
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“Any attempt to 'soften' the power of the oppressor in deference to the weakness of the oppressed almost always manifests itself in the form of false generosity; indeed, the attempt never goes beyond this. In order to have the continued opportunity to express their 'generosity', the oppressors must perpetuate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this 'generosity', which is nourished by death, despair and poverty. That is why its dispensers become desperate at the slightest threat to the source of that false generosity.”

OppressionGenerosityFood BanksFalse Generosity
Book:Pedagogy of the Oppressed
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“I wouldn't worry about it too much, son. Certainly not about the peasants and the servants. They don't feel things as we do.” “They're human.” “Barely. They might as well be another species. What would happen without us to keep them in check? They wouldn't work the land. They would be at each other's throat if we weren't there to restrain them. Face it, they are driven by their instincts. Granted, that is a generalization, and there are some individuals who rise above that. Personally I think that is how the nobility originated. Even today, with the help of the Gods, hard work and some luck such a man can rise above his station. But as a group…”

OppressionNobilityPeasants
Book:The Invisible Chains - Part 2: Bonds of Fear
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“What I’m talking about is the order of chosen men who inherit power. From Pharaohs and kings to bankers and executives. Their path is paved for them, and life is but a child’s lavish play pen. It used to be that the peasants would toil in meaningless servitude, unable to see the big picture, without a chance to break the cycle. Now we have computers to help us do our research. Suddenly, the rhythms and patterns of oppression and deceit since time immemorial come into startling focus.”

PowerKingsOppressionDeceitExecutivesBankersPeasantsPharaohsOppression Quotes
Book:Sabrina
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“Violence is initiated by those who oppress, who exploit, who fail to recognize others as people - not by those who are oppressed, exploited, and unrecognized. It is not the unloved who initiate disaffection, but those who cannot love because they love only themselves. It is not the helpless, subject to terror, who initiate terror, but the violent, who with their power create the concrete situation which begets the 'rejects of life.' It is not the tyrannized who initiate despotism, but the tyrants. It is not those whose humanity is denied them who negate humankind, but those who denied that humanity (thus negating their own as well). Force is used not by those who have become weak under the preponderance of the strong, but by the strong who have emasculated them.”

OppressionOppressedOppressor
Book:Pedagogy of the Oppressed
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“True leaders are willing to die for their dreams. They don't oppress with ignorance; they impress with visions". They live like Martin Luther King Jr, Nelson Mandela...”

DreamDiesPassionLeadershipFreedomQualityLeaderVisionDreamsExcellenceFood For ThoughtIsraelmore AyivorImpressionOppressionLiveLeadersFollowersImpressDream BigGovernanceImpressiveLeadVisionaryVisionsMartin Luther King JrMartin LutherExtra MileTrue LeadersNelson MandelaOppressorOppressiveOpressImpressor
Author:Israelmore Ayivor
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“It is amazing how dispiriting it can be to enter a learning environment and to be made immediately to suppress your own exploratory inclinations. So many learning environments in the world are still like this. Don’t question what you are taught! Just listen and get good marks on the test! It conditions us to be slaves. The minute we abandon our inquisitive nature, we cede our consciences to the whims of tyrants. We are capable of better. We owe it to ourselves and each other to create better opportunities that enhance human potential. Education is the externality that allows for this, but our methods of education must promote self-guidance and self-reliance.”

EducationSelf HelpTyrannyOppressionEducational PhilosophySelf RelianceSelf GrowthSuppressionDronesHuman PotentialHegemonySlavesEducational ReformExploratory LearningExternalityInquistive NatureSelf GuidanceSpirit Breaking
Book:Sinew of the Social Species
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“As it is the case with the Democratic construct, which is inherently a cultural expression, this truth is in most part also self-evident in apropos to all variant of institutionalized coercion, rather of a political or theocratic disposition. Such as is the case in particular in non-Democratic disposed cultures, where the cultural norm for their cultivation, is most prolific and sentient. Ergo, the ensue of political severity, is not always necessarily attributed to an imposed arbitrarian polity..but rather, it can also be a self-imposed cultural property and organic form of a specific facet of cultural norm or proclivity".”

TyrannyOppressionDaryavesh RadmaneshArbitrary PowerSelf Applied SubjugationSelf Induced ServitudeState AuthoritarianismUnconscionable Servitude
Author:Daryavesh Radmanesh
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“Thank You Hitler (The Sonnet) Thank you Hitler for showing the worst of humanity, I am sorry that we couldn't place you on a pedestal. Things would've been different if you were not a nobody, Particularly if you had a background royally honorable. Apparently if you have an empire to your name, You can get away with the most heinous of atrocities. If you have that blue blood running through your veins, Tyranny, oppression, are deemed as acts of great dignity. The common notion is, everything nazi is sick and sinister, At the same time, everything british is great and glorious, Despite the fact that it was the british empire that was, An international force of evil unlike the nazi bastards. Nazism is an enemy of humanity, there is no doubt. Only if we felt so for the empire as we do for the krauts!”

TyrannyOppressionColonialismNazismBritish EmpireHumanist PoetryNazi GermanyBritish ImperialismEast India CompanyBengal Famine
Book:Making Britain Civilized: How to Gain Readmission to The Human Race
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“Any conversation on the left these days, it's always so competitive, it's always each person trying to outperform the person before them in terms of their oppression or their lack of privilege or their personal trauma or, like, the fact that actually they’re Jewish or actually they’re bisexual, or guess what, they’re a quarter this or that ethnicity, which gives them the right to speak or the right to take offence or whatever. It’s a marketplace! Yet again! You can dress it up in the language of sensitivity and social justice and blah blah blah, but the point of intersectionality isn’t to learn how to transcend our differences, or eliminate them, the point isn’t solidarity, it’s about shoring up your brand, cornering the market, everyone out for themselves, maximising profit and minimising risk—' ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this,’ Amber said. ‘It locks us into our differences,’ Tony said, ‘it’s segregationist. And it’s also just advertising. It’s brand management. That’s my point. We’re still inside the fucking paradigm!”

LeftDifferencesTraumaOppressionVictimhoodDemocratsIntersectionalityProgressivesLiberals
Book:Birnam Wood
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“Do you know why people like me are shy about being capitalists? Well, its because we, for as long as we have known you, were capital, like bales of cotton and sacks of sugar, and you were commanding, cruel capitalists, and the memory of this so strong, the experience so recent, that we can't quite bring ourselves to embrace this idea that you think so much of.”

CapitalismSlaveryResistanceOppressionColonialismExploitationCommodificationCapitalistsHuman Commodification
Book:A Small Place
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“I wonder how it worked inside the Stasi: who thought up these blackmail schemes? Did they send them up the line for approval? Did pieces of paper come back initialled and stamped 'Approved': the ruining of a marriage, the destruction of a career, the imprisonment of a wife, the abandonment of a child? Did they circulate internal updates: 'Five new and different ways to break a heart'?”

OppressionSurveillanceBlackmailGdrBanality Of EvilStasi
Book:Stasiland: Stories From Behind The Berlin Wall
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“They oppressed us but unable to kill our spirit.”

Inspirational QuotesMotivational QuotesWise WordsSpiritual QuotesOppressionWise QuotesPositive QuotesFighting SpiritChallenges QuotesPositive MindsetStrength Through AdversityOvercomer QuotesPositive Thinking QuotesPositive MotivationObstacles QuotesUplifting QuotesOvercoming ObstaclesSpiritual WarfareInner Strength QuotesStrength And CourageStrength Of SpiritCharacteristics Of LeadershipProblems QuotesSurviving LifeSurviving SpiritTragedy Of LifeTroubles QuotesSurviving Hard TimesInspiring Thoughts Quotes
Book:Think Great: Be Great!
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“I didn't create the system- I was born into it," I say at last. It feels like a fair thing to say. His face seems to be at war. A flash of anger, a sharp narrowing of his gaze, then a slight pull of his eyebrows- exasperation maybe, but smoothed away to make room for a clenched jaw. "Please stop talking before I do something I regret. Por favor." "What did I say that was so terrible?" My hands fly to my hips. "If you don't explain it to me, how am i supposed to know-" "I'm a little tired of explaining myself," Rumi says flatly. "Have been for years. And you all never listen. Do your own reading on the subject, why don't you? And then come back and we'll discuss whatever you like.”

PrivilegeOppressionExasperationSystems Of OppressionUse Google
Book:Woven in Moonlight
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“In other words, neither oppression nor exploitation as such is ever the main cause for resentment; wealth without visible function is much more intolerable because nobody can understand why it should be tolerated. Antisemitism reached its climax when Jews had similarly lost their public functions and their influence, and were left with nothing but their wealth.”

OppressionAristocracyFrench Revolution1968AntisemitismPolitical StruggleWealth DisparityAlexis De Tocqueville
Book:The Origins of Totalitarianism
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“People were upset about Trump's win in 2016 because he ran a campaign promising to implement policies that targeted racial and ethnic minorities with state violence (and he did) not simply because he was mean or rude. In no sense is Biden's campaign comparable. Sorry! Biden won't be banning Christians, arbitrarily revoking the status of white immigrants here because of natural disasters, trying to sell off white populated parts of the country or encouraging police brutality against white people. Your disappointment is not oppression. (11/9/2020 on Twitter)”

TrumpOppressionImmigrantsPolice BrutalityDonald TrumpWhite PrivilegeBiden2020 ElectionJoe BidenWhite Americans
Author:Adam Serwer
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“Now, Woolf calls her fictional bastion of male privilege Oxbridge, so I'll call mine Yarvard. Even though she cannot attend Yarvard because she is a woman, Judith cheerfully applies for admission at, let's call it, Smithcliff, a prestigious women's college. She is denied admission on the grounds that the dorms and classrooms can't accommodate wheelchairs, that her speech pattern would interfere with her elocution lessons, and that her presence would upset the other students. There is also the suggestion that she is not good marriage material for the men at the elite college to which Smithcliff is a bride-supplying "sister school." The letter inquires as to why she hasn't been institutionalized. When she goes to the administration building to protest the decision, she can't get up the flight of marble steps on the Greek Revival building. This edifice was designed to evoke a connection to the Classical world, which practiced infanticide of disabled newborns.”

HumorEducationPrejudiceOppressionDisabilityAccessibilityAbleism
Author:Rosemarie Garland Thomson
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“When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organize itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms, and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class. In place of the old bourgeois society with its classes and class antagonisms we shall have an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”

RevolutionSocialismOppressionCommunismRegulationPolitical PowerProletariatFree Development
Book:The Communist Manifesto
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“Saying something is 'politically correct' is often a way of dismissing the voices of the oppressed.”

RacismPrejudiceOppressionLgbtLgbtqOppressedPolitical CorrectnessRacism In AmericaHomophobiaBiasedPolitically CorrectRacism QuotesBiasesPrejudicesLgbt QuotesLgbt RightsRacism And CultureMarginalizationSilencingRacism QuoteDismissalPolitically IncorrectOppression QuotesPolitically Correct CultureEthnocentrismSilencing DissentBiased OpinionEthnocentricity
Author:DaShanne Stokes
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“Women of today are still being called upon to stretch across the gap of male ignorance and to educate men as to our existence and our needs. This is an old and primary tool of all oppressors to keep the oppressed occupied with the master's concerns. Now we hear that is is the task of women of Color to educated white women - in the face of tremendous resistance - as to our existence, our differences, our relative roles in our joint survival. This is a diversion of energies and a tragic repetition of racist patriarchal thought.”

EducationIgnoranceOppressionSexismWhite Feminism
Book:Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
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“I'm afraid, you're right...though not only of them. We'll lose everything, including the way we live,' Hussein said. 'And these young people will lose even more. One day they'll make them spit on all that we know, and will make them recite their laws and their story of the world as if it were the holy word. When they come to write about us, what will they say? That we made slaves.”

HistoryOppressionColonialismAfricaEmpireColonisation
Book:Paradise
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