#Oppression Quotes

“Women being the weaker vessels, are ever thrust to the walls.”

“I begin to find an idle and fond bondage in the oppression of aged tyranny, who sways, not as it hath power, but as it is suffered.”

“Bondage is hoarse, and may not speak aloud.”

“Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.”

“Laws just or unjust may govern men's actions. Tyrannies may restrain or regulate their words. The machinery of propaganda may pack their minds with falsehood and deny them truth for many generations of time. But the soul of man thus held in trance or frozen in a long night can be awakened by a spark coming from God knows where and in a moment the whole structure of lies and oppression is on trial for its life.”

“Slavery it is that makes slavery; freedom, freedom. The slavery of women happened when the men were slaves of kings.”

“The seed of revolution is repression.”

“Societies exist under three forms sufficiently distinguishable. 1. Without government, as among our Indians. 2. Under governments wherein the will of every one has a just influence, as is the case in England in a slight degree, and in our states, in a great one. 3. Under governments of force: as is the case in all other monarchies and in most of the other republics. To have an idea of the curse of existence under these last, they must be seen. It is a government of wolves over sheep.”

“The history of his present majesty, is a history of unremitting injuries and usurpationsall of which have in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world, for the truth of which we pledge a faith yet unsullied by falsehood.”

“Cats are oppressed, dogs terrify them, landladies starve them, boys stone them, everybody speaks of them with contempt. If they were human beings we could talk of their oppressors with a studied violence, add our strength to theirs, even organize the oppressed and like good politicians sell our charity for power.”

“Much did I rage when young, Being by the world oppressed, But now with flattering tongue It speeds the parting guest.”

“The history of most women is hidden either by silence, or by flourishes and ornaments that amount to silence.”

“Hurrah for revolution and cannon come again!The beggars have changed places, but the lash goes on.”

“Beware of the words "internal security," for they are the eternal cry of the oppressor.”

“The most excellent symbol of the people is the paving stone. One walks on it until it falls on one's head.”

“There is such a thing as the pressure of darkness.”

“Wherever the Turkish hoof trods, no grass grows.”

“Freedom has nothing to do with having the right to vote for your oppressor; freedom is not having any form of oppression.”

“In USA, a black man only have like five years we can exhibit maximum strength, and that's right now while you a teenager, while you still strong, while you still wanna lift weights, while you still wanna shoot back. 'Cause once you turn 30, it's like they take the heart and soul out of a man, out of a black man, in this country. And you don't wanna fight no more.”

“Niggers was the ones on the rope, hanging off the thing. Niggas is the ones with gold ropes,hanging out at clubs.”

“Idleness is the heaviest of all oppressions.”

“Inevitably we look upon society, so kind to you, so harsh to us, as an ill-fitting form that distorts the truth; deforms the mind; fetters the will.”

“Unless the mass retains sufficient control over those entrusted with the powers of their government, these will be perverted to their own oppression, and to the perpetuation of wealth and power in the individuals and their families selected for the trust.”

“We live like caged beasts waiting for the day to let the rage free.”

“They wanna censor me, they ratha see me in a cell, livin' in hell, with only a few of us to live to tell.”

“Oppression is often the consequence, but seldom or never the means of riches; and tho' avarice will preserve a man from being necessitously poor, it generally makes him too timorous to be wealthy.”

“He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.”

“We still find the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry and grasping at the spoil of the multitude. Invention is continually exercised to furnish new pretenses for revenue and taxation. It watches prosperity as its prey and permits none to escape without a tribute.”

“With all this extra stressinThe question I wonder is after death, after my last breathWhen will I finaly get to rest? Through this supressionthey punish the people that's askin questionsAnd those that possess, steal from the ones without possesionsThe message I stress: to make it stop study your lessonsDon't settle for less - even the genius asks-es questionsBe grateful for blessingsDon't ever change, keep your essenceThe power is in the people and politics we address.”

“The death agony of the barricade was about to begin.For, since the preceding evening, the two rows of houses in the Rue de la Chanvrerie had become two walls; ferocious walls, doors closed, windows closed, shutters closed. A house is an escarpment, a door is a refusal, a facade is a wall. This wall hears, sees and will not. It might open and save you. No. This wall is a judge. It gazes at you and condemns you. What dismal things are closed houses.”

“Oppression is often the consequence, but seldom or never the means of riches.”

“The only tyrannies from which men, women and children are suffering in real life are the tyrannies of minorities.”

“Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of the day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers (adminstrators) too plainly proves a deliberate, systematic plan of reducing us to slavery.”

“To say that any people are not fit for freedom, is to make poverty their choice, and to say they had rather be loaded with taxes than not.”

“The end of all political associations is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man; and these rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance of oppression.”

“To constrain the brute force of the people, the European governments deem it necessary to keep them down by hard labor, poverty and ignorance, and to take from them, as from bees, so much of their earnings, as that unremitting labor shall be necessary to obtain a sufficient surplus to sustain a scanty and miserable life.”

“Everyone may be called "comrade," but some comrades have the power of life and death over other comrades.”

“When I contemplate the natural dignity of man; when I feel (for Nature has not been kind enough to me to blunt my feelings) for the honor and happiness of its character, I become irritated at the attempt to govern mankind by force and fraud, as if they were all knaves and fools, and can scarcely avoid disgust at those who are thus imposed upon.”

“Immediate necessity makes many things convenient, which if continued would grow into oppressions.”

“Slavery is no scholar, no improver; it does not love the whistle of the railroad; it does not love the newspaper, the mailbag, a college, a book or a preacher who has the absurd whim of saying what he thinks; it does not increase the white population; it does not improve the soil; everything goes to decay.”

“Im Krieg machen die Starken die Schwachen zu Sklaven, im Frieden machen die Reichen die Armen zu Sklaven.”

“He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.”

“Slavery is an institution for converting men into monkeys.”

“Law and freedom must be indivisible partners. For without law, there can be no freedom, only choas and disorder; and without freedom, law is but a cynical veneer for injustice and oppression.”

“Monarchies, aristocracies, and religions are all based upon that large defect in your race - the individual's distrust of his neighbor, and his desire, for safety's or comfort's sake, to stand well in his neighbor's eye. These institutions will always remain, and always flourish, and always oppress you, affront you, and degrade you, because you will always be and remain slaves of minorities. There was never a country where the majority of the people were in their secret hearts loyal to any of these institutions.”

“The blunting effects of slavery upon the slaveholder's moral perceptions are known and conceded the world over; and a priveleged class, an aristocracy, is but a band of slaveholders under another name.”

“I am always on the side of the revolutionists, because there never was a revolution unless there were some oppressive and intolerable conditions against which to revolute.”

“The mice which helplessly find themselves between the cats teeth acquire no merit from their enforced sacrifice.”

“I learnt from Hussein how to achieve victory while being oppressed.”

“It is better to resist oppression by violent means than to submit, but it is best of all to resist by nonviolent means.”