Quotes on Oppression

Speak against unconscious oppression, Speak against the tyranny of the unimaginative, Speak against bonds.

Black Consciousness is in essence the realization by the black man of the need to rally together with his brothers around the cause of their oppression.

We had to forge an alliance of strength based not on colour but on commitment to the total abolition of apartheid and oppression; we would seek allies, of whatever colour, as long as they were totally agreed on our liberation aims.

It means a great deal to those who are oppressed to know that they are not alone. And never let anyone tell you that what you are doing is insignificant.

Through my school years, I learned more about slavery, anti-black racism, and oppression in the U.S., and my blackness could no longer be an afterthought. I started wearing it proudly, and as my consciousness deepened, so did my love for black folks.

Together we have travelled a long road to be where we are today. This has been a road of struggle against colonial and apartheid oppression.

We speak here of the challenge of the dichotomies of war and peace, violence and non-violence, racism and human dignity, oppression and repression and liberty and human rights, poverty and freedom from want.

The oppression of women knows no ethnic nor racial boundaries, true, but that does not mean it is identical within those boundaries.

I think of the security of cages. How violence, cruelty, oppression, become a kind of home, a familiar pattern, a cage, in which we know how to operate and define ourselves.

How shall Integrity face Oppression? What shall Honesty do in the face of Deception, Decency in the face of Insult, Self-Defense before Blows? How shall Desert and Accomplishment meet Despising, Detraction, and Lies? What shall Virtue do to meet Brute Force? There are so many answers and so contradictory; and such differences for those on the one hand who meet questions similar to this once a year or once a decade, and those who face them hourly and daily.

Oppression that is clearly inexorable and invincible does not give rise to revolt but to submission.

Where constraint breaks people, and mediation makes fools of them, the seduction of power is what makes them love their oppression. Because of it, people give up their real riches for a cause that mutilates them; for an appearance that reifies them; for roles that wrest them from authentic life; for a time whose passage defines and confines them.

There is just so much hurt, disappointment, and oppression one can take... The line between reason and madness grows thinner.

The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppose.

Freedom from fear and injustice and oppression will be ours only in the measure that men who value such freedom are ready to sustain its possession - to defend it against every thrust from within or without.

It is the obligation of every person who claims to oppose oppression to resist the oppressor by every means at his or her disposal. Not to engage in physical resistance, armed resistance to oppression, is to serve the interests of the oppressor; no more, no less. There are no exceptions to the rule, no easy out.

The socialism of centralised state control of industry and production, is dead. It misunderstood the nature and development of a modern market economy. It failed to recognise that the state and public sector can become a vested interest capable of oppression as much as the vested interests of wealth and capital. it was based on a false view of class that became too rigid to explain or illuminate the nature of class division today.

Where there is oppression, there will be resistance.

It is the worst oppression, that is done by colour of justice

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.

With abolition, it's necessary to destroy systems of oppression. But it's equally necessary to put at the forefront our conversations about creation. When we fight for justice, what exactly do we want for our communities?