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Oppression Quotes

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Oppression Quotes

“Neoliberal ideology, so accurate in discerning the factors that hinder or promote economic development, is mistaken in suggesting that the “downsizing” of the state—its withdrawal from “inappropriate” activities—is automatically and obviously associated with a promise of greater freedom for citizens. For it is not only through the exercise of inappropriate and incidental activities that the state oppresses people, but also — and above all — through those that are most essential and proper to it: taxation, policing, justice, and public education. And these, rather than retreating in the new neoliberal framework, tend instead to grow disproportionately. There are two reasons for this: first, it was precisely in order to expand them that the state withdrew from the economy; second, as it unloads its economic burden, the state seeks new roles for itself that justify its existence, and ends up meddling in all sectors of human life previously left to private discretion.”

OppressionIdeologyPrivate LifePolitical PhilosophyPublic LifeStateNeoliberalism
Book:O Jardim das Aflições
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“As long as we continue to search for enemies anywhere but inside ourselves, there will always be a Middle East problem. Religion is not the solution. Religion without Jesus is just self-righteousness. Freedom from oppression will not resolve things either. Delivered from the oppression of Europe, Israel became the oppressor. Delivered from persecution, Muslims became persecutors. Abused spouses and children often go on to abuse spouses and children. It is a cliché, but it’s still true: hurt people, unless they are healed, hurt people.”

ReligionIslamOppressionPersecutionJudaismJewsMuslimsMiddle East Conflict
Book:Son of Hamas
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“From the point of view of totalitarian ethics, from the point of view of collective utility, Plato’s theory of justice is perfectly correct. To keep one’s place is a virtue. It is that civil virtue which corresponds exactly to the military virtue of discipline. And this virtue plays exactly that rôle which ‘justice’ plays in Plato’s system of virtues. For the cogs in the great clockwork of the state can show ‘virtue’ in two ways. First, they must be fit for their task, by virtue of their size, shape, strength, etc.; and secondly, they must be fitted each into its right place and must retain that place. The first type of virtues, fitness for a specific task, will lead to a differentiation, in accordance with the specific task of the cog. Certain cogs will be virtuous, i.e. fit, only if they are (‘by their nature’) large; others if they are strong; and others if they are smooth. But the virtue of keeping to one’s place will be common to all of them; and it will at the same time be a virtue of the whole: that of being properly fitted together—of being in harmony. To this universal virtue Plato gives the name ‘justice’. This procedure is perfectly consistent and it is fully justified from the point of view of totalitarian morality. If the individual is nothing but a cog, then ethics is nothing but the study of how to fit him into the whole.”

OppressionAlienationTotalitarianismCollectivismOrganizational CultureTop DownAnti IndividualismHierarchical SystemsCog In The MachineState Oppression
Book:The Open Society and Its Enemies - Volume One: The Spell of Plato
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“When demanded of those without power-- 'if you said it more nicely maybe we would listen'-- 'I can't hear you when you're so angry'-- 'the ones who are nice are the ones who will get what they want' (or, worse, the ones who are nice and pretty, which, of course, also includes white, Christian, and 'classy')-- it is yet another subjugation, yet another tool of oppression.”

WhiteChristianityPowerToolsOppressionConditioningPrettyIs It Nice
Author:Shellen Lubin
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“The abiding western dominology can with religion sanction identify anything dark, profound, or fluid with a revolting chaos, an evil to be mastered, a nothing to be ignored. 'God had made us master organizers of the world to establish system where chaos reigns. He has made us adept in government that we may administer government among savages and senile peoples.' From the vantage point of the colonizing episteme, the evil is always disorder rather than unjust order; anarchy rather than control, darkness rather than pallor. To plead otherwise is to write 'carte blanche for chaos.' Yet those who wear the mark of chaos, the skins of darkness, the genders of unspeakable openings -- those Others of Order keep finding voice. But they continue to be muted by the bellowing of the dominant discourse.”

ReligionOrderNatureHistoryFeminismChaosTheologyOppressionColonialismPostcolonialism
Book:Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming
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“Our fundamental impulses are neither good nor bad: they are ethically neutral. Education should aim at making them take forms that are good. The old method, still beloved by Christians, was to thwart instinct; the new method is to train it. Take love of power: it is useless to preach Christian humility, which merely makes the impulse take hypocritical forms. What you have to do is to provide beneficent outlets for it. The original native impulse can be satisfied in a thousand ways—oppression, politics, business, art, science, all satisfy it when successfully practised. A man will choose the outlet for his love of power that corresponds with his skill; according to the type of skill given him in youth, he will choose one occupation or another. The purpose of our public schools is to teach the technique of oppression and no other; consequently they produce men who take up the white man’s burden. But if these men could do science, many of them might prefer it. Of two activities which a man has mastered, he will generally prefer the more difficult: no chess-player will play draughts. In this way, skill may be made to minister to virtue.”

EducationSkillsSatisfactionOppressionMasteryOutletsLove Of PowerImpulsesOccupationsTeaching Science
Book:Sceptical Essays
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“When all the public eye sees are headscarves instead of individual stories, our community is collectively tokenized. It creates the perception that opportunity is limited and only a rare few of us can make it. Whenever that happens to an already marginalized community, it pits its own members in a competition against one another instead of against the restrictive frameworks that put us in that position in the first place. The first hijabi whatever won't eliminate Islamophobia just as the first black president hasn't eliminated racism, though both are signifiers of some type of progress — symbols of ascending beyond adversity.”

RacismIslamOppressionMuslimIslamophobiaMarginalizationTokenization
Book:Muslim Girl: A Coming of Age Story
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“The multiplication of technologies in the name of efficiency is actually eradicating free time by making it possible to maximize the time and place for production and minimize the unstructured travel time in between. New timesaving technologies make most workers more productive, not more free, in a world which seems to be accelerating around them.”

TechnologyCapitalismOppressionProductionWork Conditions
Book:Wanderlust: A History of Walking
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“And, sincerely, we respect her stance. The Liberal Rednecks are all about standing up for your beliefs even when they’re hateful, bigoted, and go against everything your alleged Lord and Savior stood for. The thing is, doing that would have involved quitting her job—but that’s just something the four-times-married mother was not prepared to do for her faith. Go on TV and be called a hero by powerful politicians who agree with her and her “stand”? Sure, that’s fine. Have the Church pay for her legal bills and prop her up (instead of, oh we don’t know, giving that money to the poor)? Yes, sir. But actually quit instead of breaking an oath (which, by the way, is a sin)? That’s just something Jesus apparently wouldn’t do. Kim Davis is an analogy for Christians at large in the South. She was not oppressed. She was not forced to do anything. She could have quit. The truth is she did not want to quit her job as an elected official. She wanted to bend the political will of those around her so she could prevent other humans from marrying each other because she didn’t like the idea of it. That’s not oppression—that’s someone trying to use the inordinate amount of power they have (over the media and literally as the clerk) to affect the lives of strangers she disagrees with. Guess what that is? Yup. That is oppression.”

OppressionMarriage EqualityKim DavisMarriage Equality OpponentsReligious Liberty Law
Book:The Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin' Dixie Outta the Dark
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“Fear (...) that has no relation to capabilities or even to reality is epidemic among women today. Fear of being independent (that could mean we'd end up alone and uncared for); fear of being dependent (that could mean we'd be swallowed by some dominating "other"); fear of being competent and good at what we do (that could mean we'd have to keep on being good at what we do); fear of being incompetent (that could mean we'd have to keep on feeling shlumpy, depressed, and second class). (...) Phobia has so thoroughly infiltrated the feminine experience it is like a secret plague. It has been built up over long years by social conditioning and is all the more insidious for being so thoroughly acculturated we do not even recognize what has happened to us. Women will not become free until they stop being afraid. We will not begin to experience real change in our lives, real emancipation, until we begin the process - almost a de-brainwashing - of working through the anxieties that prevent us from feeling competent and whole.”

FearWomenFeminismOppressionInsecurityPatriarchyGender RolesBrainwashingMale PrivilegeSocietal ConstructsPsychological TraumaCinderella ComplexEmotional Dependence
Book:The Cinderella Complex: Women's Hidden Fear of Independence
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“Saying, “I don’t agree with you,” or going so far as to say, “I think your belief structure is childish,” does not amount to persecution. Insensitivity is not the same as harassment or oppression.”

OppressionPostmodernismGeneration XInsensitivityRational Spirituality
Book:More Likely to Quote Star Wars than the Bible: Generation X and Our Frustrating Search for Rational Spirituality
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“The heinous misdeeds committed by the empire are no longer privy to debate. It's a known fact, at least to people with some basic brains... Imagine me coming to your home and then declaring myself the guardian of the house while helping myself with all your resources and keeping you as underling - you know, like the pilgrims did to the native Americans. Sucks right! Exactly my point!”

OppressionOccupationColonialismBritish EmpireBritish HistoryBritish ImperialismEast India CompanyBritish Raj
Book:Making Britain Civilized: How to Gain Readmission to The Human Race
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“Barbarism, thy name is Britain. In this day and age, if any societal structure is a revolting blot on the fabric of the democratic world, it's not Russia or North Korea, but the not-so-great Britain. The queen might have been a nice person, I don't know. But when a person is declared the supreme authority (head of state) of an entire people by birth, it's not something to take pride in, rather it's something to be ashamed of. Britain may mourn the death of the queen as a person, but no land deserves to be called civilized while mourning the death of a monarch. Let me put this into perspective. Almost every week a country celebrates independence from britain - if this doesn't tell you why the monarchy is the antithesis of everything that is civilized, nothing can. I wonder, they can throw a homeless man in jail for lifting a bread out of hunger, yet the empire walks free, even after raping, pillaging and looting from 90% of the world's countries! Where is the ICC (International Criminal Court) now, when one monarch after another sits on the throne, wielding the crown jewels encrusted with national treasures stolen from all over the globe!”

OppressionOccupationColonialismBritish EmpireBritish HistoryAbolish MonarchyBritish ImperialismConstitutional MonarchyEast India CompanyGod Save The Queen
Book:Corazon Calamidad: Obedient to None, Oppressive to None
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“When the descendants of a brutish empire continue to represent and maintain the authority of that empire, such descendants do not deserve even an ounce of respect from civilized humans, any more than their ancestors do, let alone be declared head of state. It'd be like respecting a neonazi for advocating for a new confederate America.”

OppressionOccupationColonialismBritish EmpireBritish HistoryAbolish MonarchyBritish ImperialismConstitutional MonarchyEast India CompanyGod Save The Queen
Book:Corazon Calamidad: Obedient to None, Oppressive to None
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“The oppression and exploitation of Latinos (like Asians) have historical roots unknown to most Americans. People who learn at least a little about Black slavery remain totally ignorant about how the United States seized half of Mexico or how it has colonized Puerto Rico.”

SlaveryOppressionMexicoAmerican HistoryUs HistoryPuerto RicoMexican HistoryPuerto Rican HistoryAsian American HistoryLatino American History
Book:De Colores Means All of Us: Latina Views for a Multi-Colored Century
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“We have men sold to build churches, women sold to support the gospel, and babes sold to purchase Bibles for the poor heathen, all for the glory of God and the good of souls. The slave auctioneer's bell and the church-going bell chime in with each other, and the bitter cries of the heart-broken slave are drowned in the religious shouts of his pious master. Revivals of religion and revivals in the slave trade go hand in hand.”

SlaverySlaveOppressionPietySuperstitionSlave OwnersRevivals
Book:Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
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“Did you reflect on Cook's arrival and rue the day we were discovered and curse the coming of foreign sailors with bodies soaked in the blights of London sewers? Giving this cruel treasure to our unblemished women? Did you think of this and rage and want to kill? Did you remember all the insults down the years from French, British and American alike Did you remember the threat of their guns? I was not there during those dark days of anguish and confusion when the palace shook with intrigue and rumor that the greedy determined men downtown were plotting your ruin and demise of our nation. --from "Manawaʻino”

PoetryOppressionHawaiiHawaiianQueen LiliuokalaniHawaiian OverthrowCaptain Cook
Book:Hanai: A Poem for Queen Liliuokalani
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“Violence is central to patriarchy, and the forms of systemic violence are interconnected in Western societies. Recognizing similarities across forms of oppression (such as racism, child abuse, speciesism, and sexism, for example) is essential.”

ViolenceOppressionPatriarchyViolence Against WomenIntersectionalitySystemic OppressionViolence Against Animals
Book:Sister Species: Women, Animals and Social Justice
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“The second important principle was 'normality.' The Kremlin has been trying for years to marginalize our movement and drive it underground, to turn us into a modern equivalent of the Soviet dissidents. I have great respect for those dissidents, who were heroes. But in 2012, no one in their right mind wanted to become a heroic dissident-it's dangerous and it's scary. Everyone just wanted to be normal. And that's exactly what we were-normal people with a normal office life. Although we were essentially an organization for revolution, with each person taking great risks, from the outside we looked like a bunch of Moscow hipsters. We had a spacious open plan office and a coffee machine, and we played Secret Santa. WE had Twitter and Instagram accounts. Our staff was young, everyone was friends with everyone else, we went on hikes together and threw parties (though in later years I began to notice a curious tendency for everything that was the most fun to begin after I had gone home). The only way we were different from a fancy start-up was that we were battling Putin. Of course that brought with it predictable downers, like having our office bugged. Although that was disagreeable, it was not particularly scary. Over time, however, the downers became more numerous. the pressure grew year by year, and by 2019 arrests and searches had become part of our daily lives. Our hipster office remained just as hipsterish, only now the riot police sawed through the door with a chain saw, burst in with semiautomatic weapons, made everyone lie on the floor. During one of these raids, fifty members of the staff were relieved of their computers and phones, and all our equipment, documents, and personal belongings were taken. If you managed to hide your phone behind the baseboard molding and your computer in the ceiling tiles-well done. But most often everything was confiscated. The tactic was clear enough: We needed money to replace the equipment, and we would have to ask for donations. The Kremlin was hoping it would gradually become more difficult to raise funds, but after each attack on us we saw a surge in contributions. What the Anti-Corruption Foundation does is obvious from the name. We are hybrids, somewhere between journalists, lawyers, and political activists. We come across a story involving corruption, examine the documents, collect evidence, and publish it. In the first years, we did so as posts on my blog; later, as videos on YouTube. The most important thing we do, then, is spread the story so millions hear about it. The number of independent media outlets was falling rapidly, censorship was everywhere, and no major newspaper, let alone television network, was going to publicize our work. What do you do in a situation like that? You tell the story yourself and ask others to help. Post a link on your blog, write something on social media, send the video to your friends, and if nothing else is helping, print out a leaflet and put it up in elevators. 'This is our mayor: His official salary is around $2,000 a month. and here is his apartment in Miami, which is worth $5 million.' At the end of every investigation I made an appeal: 'Guys we've done our bit. Here's a great, important story, but without your help no one is going to know about it. Send links to your friends. Join your regional group on VKontakte and leave a comment there too. Send it to your grandmother and your parents.' The result was that donors not only gave us money but effectively started working for us themselves and became an important part of our organization.”

CorruptionOppressionNormalizationAnti Corruption
Book:Patriot: A Memoir
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“The same patriarchy that oppresses women oppresses nonhuman animals. Farmed animals and “housewives,” “lab” animals and prostitutes, dancing bears and girls in the sex trade—all have too long been exploited by the same patriarchal hierarchy wherein the comparatively weak are exploited for the benefit of the powerful.”

WomenPowerFeminismOppressionPatriarchyAnimal LiberationIntersectionalityFactory FarmingSex TradeFarmed Animals
Book:Speaking Up for Animals: An Anthology of Women's Voices
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“This kind of action is a prevalent error among oppressed peoples. It is based upon the false notion that there is only a limited and particular amount of freedom that must be divided up between us, with the largest and juiciest pieces of liberty going as spoils to the victor or the stronger. So instead of joining together to fight for more, we quarrel between ourselves for a larger slice of the one pie. Black women fight between ourselves over men, instead of pursuing and using who we are and our strengths for lasting change; Black women and men fight between ourselves over who has more of a right to freedom, instead of seeing each other's struggles as part of our own and vital to our common goals; Black and white women fight between ourselves over who is the more oppressed, instead of seeing those areas in which our causes are the same. (Of course, this last separation is worsened by the intransigent racism that white women too often fail to, or cannot, address in themselves.)”

FreedomOppressionZero Sum Game
Book:Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
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“Assassinating a tyrant is not the solution, it only makes them a martyr to their followers. Stand up to them, strip them of their position, then throw 'em in jail. There's nothing more torturous to a megalomaniacal tyrant than rotting behind bars like a two-bit criminal.”

Social JusticeTyrannyOppressionNonviolenceOligarchyHumanitarian CrisisTyrantWar CriminalsCrime Against HumanityOppression And Government
Book:Either Reformist or Terrorist: If You Are Terror I Am Your Grandfather
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“The masculine ideal of perfection creates a hyper-sensitivity to any nuance of imperfection. Any man who commits his life to the perfectionistic ideal of masculinity is going to feel like a failure. The people around him will feel abused and oppressed by him. The only way to do things is his way, the right way, the ideal way. Every man who succeeds at this game will wind up in the same place: Alone in his victory. At the top of the pyramid there’s no room for anyone else.”

PerfectionOppressionImperfectionMasculine Ideal
Book:Codependency & Men
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“The ways that teenagers are - the supposedly immutable patterns of behavior culturally ascribed to teens - exist within society in which they are oppressed, stripped of power, surveilled (by parents or other guardians, schools, and by police), criminalized, and controlled. I would suggest that basing our understanding of teenage behavior on a population existing under oppression, shut away from the rest of society in schools, with very little power or freedom, does not represent an accurate picture of what teens are innately like. I would also suggest that much of what is cast as "bad" behavior is not inherently bad; it's simply inconvenient or dangerous to power.”

OppressionTeensTeenagersAgeismYouth CultureOppression QuotesYouth LiberationTeens And BehaviorTeenage Behavior
Author:Idzie Desmarais
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“This acute, “a selfdissolving contradiction,” Marx had very precisely seen and foreseen that “it establishes a monopoly in certain spheres and thereby requires state interference.” This contradiction “reproduces a new financial aristocracy” (how much Marx was right!), no matter it will call itself Communist Party of Soviet Union or DuPont Financial Circle. It reproduces “a new variety of parasites . . . , a whole system of swindling and cheating by means of corporation promotion, stock issuance, and stock speculation.”

EconomyMythOppressionCommunismAnalysisDictatorshipNon FictionPolitical IdeologyEffectiveMonopolistic
Book:Socialism Is Dead! Long Live Socialism!: The Marx Code-Socialism with a Human Face
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“White liberals are always saying, "What can we do?” I mean, they’re always coming to help black people. I thought of an analogy. If you were walking down the street and a man had a gun on another man – let’s say both of them were white – and you had to help somebody, whom would you help? It’s obvious to me that if I were walking down the street, and a man had a gun on another man, and I was going to help, I’d help the man who didn’t have the gun, if the man who had the gun was just pulling the gun on the other man for no apparent reason – if he was just going to rob him or shoot him because he didn’t like him. The only way I could help is either to get a gun and shoot the man with the gun, or take the gun away from him – join the fellow who doesn’t have a gun and both of us gang up on the man with the gun. But white liberals never do that. When the man has the gun, they walk around him and they come to the victim, and they say “Let me help you,” and what they mean is “help you adjust to the situation with the man who has the gun on you." If indeed white liberals are going to help, their only job is to get the gun from the man and talk to him, because he is a sick man. The black man is not the sick man, it is the white man who is sick, he’s the one who picked up the gun.”

RacismOppressionWhite SupremacyWhite Liberals
Book:Stokely Speaks: From Black Power to Pan-Africanism
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“Centuries of social conditioning has created a generational fear among women of being perceived as masculine.This is where all the shaming and labels come into play, which perpetuate the oppression of girls and women. As a society we shame girls with deep voices or masculine features and we shame boys with soft voices or effeminate gestures. Girls get called "too manly" and boys get called "too girly". The only solution I can think of is to be unashamedly "you". If that means challenging stereotypes and gender norms, go right ahead!”

FeminismIdentityGenderOppressionFeminineMasculineStereotypesFeminist QuotesSocial ConditioningSocietal NormsMiya Yamanouchi
Book:Embrace Your Sexual Self: A Practical Guide for Women
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“The blues is relevant today because when we look down through the corridors of time, the black American interpretation of tragicomic hope in the face of dehumanizing hate and oppression will be seen as the only kind of hope that has any kind of maturity in a world of overwhelming barbarity and bestiality. That barbarity is found not just in the form of terrorism but in the form of the emptiness of our lives - in terms of the wasted human potential that we see around the world. In this sense, the blues is a great democratic contribution of black people to world history.”

OppressionWorld HistoryBluesBlack Americans
Book:Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism
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