If ever I feel the soul within me elevate and expand to those dimensions not wholly unworthy of its Almighty Architect, it is when I contemplate the cause of my country, deserted by all the world beside, and I standing up boldly and lone and hurling defiance at her victorious oppressors.
Abraham Lincoln
As people get more desperate, history suggests that they're not going to rise in a mighty proletarian tidal wave and wash away their oppressors. They're gonna turn on each other.
Alan Moore
Every revolutionary ends up either by becoming an oppressor or a heretic.
Albert Camus
Racism oppresses its victims, but also binds the oppressors, who sear their consciences with more and more lies until they become prisoners of those lies. They cannot face the truth of human equality because it reveals the horror of the injustices they commit.
Alveda King
Two children of same cruel parent look at one another and see in each other the image of the cruel parent or the image of their past oppressor. This is very much the case between Jew and Arab: It's a conflict between two victims.
Amos Oz
The genius of any slave system is found in the dynamics which isolate slaves from each other, obscure the reality of a common condition, and make united rebellion against the oppressor inconceivable.
Andrea Dworkin
Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor.
Anne Lamott
Compromise is not such ignoble and deplorable a thing as we generally think. It is rather an indispensable factor in the political strategy. Any nation that rises against the oppressors is bound to fail in the beginning and to gain partial reforms during the medieval period of its struggle through compromises.
Bhagat Singh
We have overcome economic devastation, defeated mighty oppressors, and lifted up generation after generation of Americans. We can - and we will - do it again. For that is our birthright as members of the American family - white, black, Hispanic, Asian, immigrant, or descendant of the Founding Fathers themselves.
Brian Sandoval
Black people are the only ones told to love our oppressors. I hate that. We've been loving our oppressors for a long time, and nothing has changed - that love has to be reciprocated.
Charlamagne tha God
If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.
Desmond Tutu
We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.
Elie Wiesel
Who Rebels? Who rises in arms? Rarely the slave, but almost always the oppressor turned slave.
Emil Cioran
The idea that the Internet favors the oppressed rather than the oppressor is marred by what I call cyber-utopianism: a naive belief in the emancipatory nature of online communication that rests on a stubborn refusal to admit its downside.
Evgeny Morozov
You can't build a revolution with no education. Jomo Kenyatta did this in Africa, and because the people were not educated, he became as much an oppressor as the people he overthrew.
Fred Hampton
Raise your eyes and count the small gang of your oppressors who are only strong through the blood they suck from you and through your arms which you lend them unwillingly.
Georg Buchner
Very few men imprisoned for economic crimes or even crimes of passion against the oppressor feel that they are really guilty.
George Jackson
What people don't know about oppression is that the oppressor works much harder. You always grew up being told you were not smart enough or not fast enough, but we all lived from the time we were children to beat the system.
Hugh Masekela
I think the most difficult thing that has had to happen in South Africa for the previously disadvantaged communities is they had to reconcile that the oppressor has been enriched and the establishment is now making five or 10 times more profit than they were during the time the economic embargo was on them.
You know, it's 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
I've always found the rhetoric of mainstream civil rights leaders and organizations to be far too timid, accommodationist, and gradualist. It always seemed to me that they behaved like meek and gentle supplicants begging the oppressor for a few crumbs of justice, for a few molecules of citizenship rights.
Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.
Democracy is the form of government that gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.
Liberals tend to be much more concerned about business and corporations as the oppressors. They look to government as the solution. On the Right it's the opposite. They see business as good, as what generates wealth in society, and they see government as the oppressor, which makes it hard for especially small businesspeople.
Common tyrants, and public oppressors, are not intitled to obedience from their subjects, by virtue of any thing here laid down by the inspired apostle.
I think the reason why people love 'Downton Abbey' is because all the characters are given the same weight. Some are nice, some are not, but it has nothing to do with class or oppressors versus the oppressed.
That is just the reality of being a marginalized person in this country: you have to deal with the psychological impact of your oppressor - whether that's being a woman dealing with men or gay people dealing with straight people or trans people dealing with everybody else.
Feminism, unlike almost every other social movement, is not a struggle against a distinct oppressor - it's not the ruling class or the occupiers or the colonizers - it's against a deeply held set of beliefs and assumptions that we women, far too often, hold ourselves.
I was raised a black child in the South, where you're indoctrinated into a religion that an oppressor gave you.
When you're talking about an authority figure oppressing against people, it's the people that hold that authority figure up. If you want to get free of this bondage, then we need to think about ways to free ourselves rather than looking to the oppressors to free us.
Dictators and oppressors should continue to fear me because I will be here for a long time.
If you're on the side of the oppressor, or you're defending the oppressor, or you're actually trying to humanize the oppressor, then that's a problem.
During my last voyage to America, I enjoyed the happiness of seeing that revolution completed, and, thinking of the one that would probably occur in France, I said in a speech to Congress, published everywhere except in the 'French Gazette,' 'May this revolution serve as a lesson to oppressors and as an example to the oppressed!'
Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.
To punish the oppressors of humanity is clemency; to forgive them is cruelty.
I think history repeats itself. There's a constant conversation between the oppressed and the oppressor. No matter what your field is, whether it's gender equality, the Time's Up movement, or diversity casting, it's always going to be a back-and-forth battle.
But the fact is we did have colonies in the east of Poland, we did have a slave economy there. But this is not common knowledge - or part of our national myth. It goes against the current romanticised view of the government, and much of the country, that Poles have always been victims, never oppressors.
Revolution is born as a social entity within the oppressor society.
The oppressed, having internalized the image of the oppressor and adopted his guidelines, are fearful of freedom.
At a certain point in their existential experience, the oppressed feel an irresistible attraction toward the oppressor and his way of life. Sharing this way of life becomes an overpowering aspiration.
It behooves every American to encourage home manufactures, that our oppressors may feel through their pockets the effects of their blind folly.
The most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.
If one is free at heart, no man-made chains can bind one to servitude, but if one's mind is so manipulated and controlled by the oppressor, then there will be nothing the oppressed can do to scare his powerful masters.
The revolutionary sees his task as liberation not only of the oppressed but also of the oppressor. Happiness can never truly exist in a state of tension.
There isn't a religion on earth that isn't damaging to the human race because every one of them is patriarchal and every one eliminates more than half of the human race - women. They are all oppressors of women.
It's our own small voice within that is our oppressor; it says we are not worthy and not powerful enough. Our limited beliefs are the real foes we need to fight and conquer.
