Oppression

You know, its not the world that was my oppressor, because what the world does to you, if the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough, you begin to do to yourself. – James Baldwin

Everybody knows there is no fineness or accuracy of suppression; if you hold down one thing, you hold down the adjoining. – Saul Bellow

The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed. – Steve Biko

Nature in darkness groans and men are bound to sullen contemplation in the night: restless they turn on beds of sorrow; in their inmost brain feeling the crushing wheels, they rise, they write the bitter words of stern philosophy and knead the bread of knowledge with tears and groans. – William Blake

Among those who dislike oppression are many who like to oppress. – Napoleon Bonaparte

They have given us into the hand of new unhappy lords. Lords without anger and honor, who dare not carry their swords. They fight by shuffling papers; they have bright dead alien eyes; They look at our labor and laughter as a tired man looks at flies. – G. K. Chesterton

Tyranny destroys or strengthens the individual; freedom enervates him, until he becomes no more than a puppet. Man has more chances of saving himself by hell than by paradise. – E. M. Cioran

Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is in an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe. – Frederick Douglass

We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again. – Nathanael Greene

You cannot raise the standard against oppression, or leap into the breach to relieve injustice, and still keep an open mind to every disconcerting fact, or an open ear to the cold voice of doubt. – Judge Learned Hand

True enough, the country is calm. Calm as a morgue or a grave, would you not say? – Vaclav Havel

First we kill all the subversives; then, their collaborators; later, those who sympathize with them; afterward, those who remain indifferent; and finally, the undecided. – General Iberico Saint Jean

Do not be misled by the fact that you are at liberty and relatively free; that for the moment you are not under lock and key: you have simply been granted a reprieve. – Ryszard Kapuscinski

Loss of freedom seldom happens overnight. Oppression doesnt stand on the doorstep with toothbrush moustache and swastika armband — it creeps up insidiously… step by step, and all of a sudden the unfortunate citizen realizes that it is gone. – Baron Lane

The history of an oppressed people is hidden in the lies and the agreed myth of its conquerors. – Meridel Le Sueur

A handful of soldiers is always better than a mouthful of arguments. – G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg

The web of domination has become the web of Reason itself, and this society is fatally entangled in it. – Herbert Marcuse

When there is oppression, the only self-respecting thing is to rise and say this shall cease today, because my right is justice. If you are stronger, you have to help the weaker boy or girl both in play and in the work. – Sarojini Naidu