Oppressed quotes:

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Truth is on the side of the oppressed. -- Malcolm X
Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself. -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself.. -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
The most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed. -- Steven Biko
Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Oppressed persons, oppressed cultures, tend to be more political, obviously, as are those with a rage for justice, or the crazy messianic desire. -- Gerald Stern
The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them in parliament. -- Vladimir Lenin
Oppressed people are frequently very oppressive when first liberated. They know but two positions: somebody's foot on their neck or their foot on somebody's neck. -- Florynce Kennedy
Oppressed people are treacherous for the simple reason that treachery is both a means of survival and a way to curry favor with one's oppressor. -- Florence King
Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. -- Karl Marx
Oppressed cultures often envy those which are not, or oppressed individuals do, and sometimes those which - and who - are not envy those which - who - are. -- Gerald Stern
The Theatre of the Oppressed is theatre in this most archaic application of the word. In this usage, all human beings are Actors (they act!) and Spectators (they observe!). -- Augusto Boal
Oppressed people, whatever their level of formal education, have the ability to understand and interpret the world around them, to see the world for what it is, and move to transform it. -- Ella Baker
Whoever removes the Cross and its interpretation by the New Testament from the center, in order to replace it, for example, with the social commitment of Jesus to the oppressed as a new center, no longer stands in continuity with the apostolic faith. -- Hans Urs von Balthasar
Oppressed groups are frequently placed in the situation of being listened to only if we frame our ideas in the language that is familiar to and comfortable for a dominant group. This requirement often changes the meaning of our ideas and works to elevate the ideas of dominant groups. -- Patricia Hill Collins
Gossip is the opiate of the oppressed. -- Erica Jong
Those who oppressed us described us as the Dark Continent! -- Thabo Mbeki
Never elated when someone's oppressed, never dejected when another one's blessed. -- Alexander Pope
The oppressed, instead of striving for liberation, tend themselves to become oppressors. -- Paulo Freire
The oppressed never free themselves - they do not have the necessary strengths. -- Clare Boothe Luce
Women are the only oppressed group in our society that lives in intimate association with their opressors. -- Evelyn Cunningham
No other offense has ever been visited with such severe penalties as seeking to help the oppressed. -- Clarence Darrow
The history of an oppressed people is hidden in the lies and the agreed myth of its conquerors. -- Meridel Le Sueur
Indeed, the interests of the oppressors lie in 'changing the consciousness of the oppressed, not the situation which oppresses them'; -- Paulo Freire
If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing. -- Malcolm X
Attempting to liberate the oppressed without their reflective participation in the act of liberation is to treat them as objects that must be saved from a burning building. -- Paulo Freire
It is essential for the oppressed to realize that when they accept the struggle for humanization they also accept, from that moment, their total responsibility for the struggle. -- Paulo Freire
Dehumanization, although a concrete historical fact, is not a given destiny but the result of an unjust order that engenders violence in the oppressors, which in turn dehumanizes the oppressed -- Paulo Freire
Time is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. Truth is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. You don't need anything else. -- Malcolm X
American and Israel share a special bond. Our relationship is unique among all nations. Like America, Israel is a strong democracy, a symbol of freedom, and an oasis of liberty, a home to the oppressed and persecuted. -- William J. Clinton
Some people are afraid of generosity. They feel they will be taken advantage of or oppressed. In cultivating generosity, we are only oppressing our greed and attachment. This allows our true nature to come out and become lighter and freer. -- Ajahn Chah
This book will present some aspects of what the writer has termed the pedagogy of the oppressed, a pedagogy which must be forged with, not for, the oppressed (whether individuals or peoples) in the incessant struggle to regain their humanity. -- Paulo Freire
I have always felt it was a handicap for oppressed peoples to depend so largely upon a leader, because unfortunately in our culture, the charismatic leader usually becomes a leader because he has found a spot in the public limelight. -- Ella Baker
Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who feels what is happening. Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand. -- Simone Weil
To hold a people in oppression you have to convince them first that they are supposed to be oppressed. -- John Henrik Clarke
Humour is the weapon of unarmed people: it helps people who are oppressed to smile at the situation that pains them. -- Simon Wiesenthal
Atheism is aristocratic; the idea of a great Being that watches over oppressed innocence and punishes triumphant crime is altogether popular. -- Maximilien Robespierre
I never felt oppressed because of my gender. When I'm writing a poem or drawing, I'm not a female; I'm an artist. -- Patti Smith
I want to be the voice of the people; black, white, everyday, oppressed people. A person trying to make it and to do it right. -- Common
It is absolutely essential that the oppressed participate in the revolutionary process with an increasingly critical awareness of their role as subjects of the transformation. -- Paulo Freire
I just don't believe that when people are being unjustly oppressed that they should let someone else set rules for them by which they can come out from under that oppression. -- Malcolm X
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. -- Paulo Freire
Since being in India, I am more convinced than ever before that the method of nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for justice and human dignity. -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
As a black woman, my politics and political affiliation are bound up with and flow from participation in my people's struggle for liberation, and with the fight of oppressed people all over the world against American imperialism. -- Angela Davis
Universities are no longer educational in any sense of the word that Rousseau would have recognised. Instead, they have become unabashed instruments of capital. Confronted with this squalid betrayal, one imagines he would have felt sick and oppressed. -- Terry Eagleton
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
We shall suffer no attachment to literature, no taste for abstract discussion, no love of purely intellectual theories, to seduce us from our devotion to the cause of the oppressed, the down trodden, the insulted and injured masses of our fellow men. -- George Ripley
Ironically, when I've asked my straight friends to join me in hanging a rainbow flag, they answer, 'But someone might think we're gay,' not realizing that is exactly the point. To be mistaken for the oppressed is to momentarily become the oppressed. -- Alice Dreger
My sole ambition is to rid Mexico of the class that has oppressed her and given the people a chance to know what real liberty means. And if I could bring that about today by giving up my life, I would do it gladly. -- Pancho Villa
You could tell 'The Handmaid's Tale' from a male point of view. People have mistakenly felt that the women are oppressed, but power tends to organise itself in a pyramid. I could pick a male narrator from somewhere in that pyramid. It would interesting. -- Margaret Atwood
Critical and liberating dialogue, which presupposes action, must be carried on with the oppressed at whatever the stage of their struggle for liberation. The content of that dialogue can and should vary in accordance with historical conditions and the level at which the oppressed perceive reality. -- Paulo Freire
Human beings want to be free and however long they may agree to stay locked up, to stay oppressed, there will come a time when they say 'That's it.' Suddenly they find themselves doing something that they never would have thought they would be doing, simply because of the human instinct that makes them turn their face towards freedom. -- Aung San Suu Kyi
An oppressed people will always rise. -- Henning Mankell
Being oppressed means the absence of choices -- bell hooks
Revolution is the festival of the oppressed. -- Germaine Greer
God is on the side of the oppressed. -- Desmond Tutu
To forgive an oppressor is oppression upon the oppressed. -- Umar
The oppressed will always believe the worst about themselves. -- Frantz Fanon
The ignorance of the oppressed is strength for the oppressor. -- A. R. Bernard
An artist represents an oppressed people and makes revolution irresistible. -- Toni Cade Bambara
High school studfents are the largest oppressed minority in America. -- Jerry Rubin
Take sides. Neutrality always serves the oppressor and never the oppressed. -- Elie Wiesel
Power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed. -- Wally Lamb
Power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed." -- Wally Lamb
I learnt from Hussein how to achieve victory while being oppressed. -- Mahatma Gandhi
Men will often admit other women are oppressed but not you. -- Sheila Rowbotham
To pardon the oppressor is to deal harshly with the oppressed. -- Saadi
The oppressed find in the oppressors their model of 'manhood.' -- Paulo Freire
We cannot guarantee the human rights of any oppressed group alone. -- Jill Stein
Serve humanity, regardless of religion. Show solidarity for those suffering and oppressed. -- Tariq Ramadan
Resistance! Resistance! No oppressed people have ever secured their liberty without resistance! -- Henry Highland Garnet
REVOLUTIONARY: An oppressed person waiting for the opportunity to become an oppressor. -- Rick Bayan
The greatest humanistic and historical task of the oppressed: to liberate themselves... -- Paulo Freire
a poet will even face death when he sees his people oppressed. -- Carolina Maria de Jesus
But nonviolence was never for the oppressor; it was for the oppressed. -- Nikki Giovanni
Obviously the most oppressed of any oppressed group will be its women -- Lorraine Hansberry
I'm going to continue to stand with the people that are being oppressed. -- Colin Kaepernick
It is only the oppressed who, by freeing themselves, can free their oppressors. -- Paulo Freire
When men are oppressed, it's a tragedy. When women are oppressed, it's tradition. -- Letty Cottin Pogrebin
The danger of oppression is not just being oppressed, it's becoming an oppressor, -- Jon Stewart
The oppressed want above all to imitate their oppressors; they want to retaliate. -- Eric Hoffer
Nonviolence is the most potent technique for oppressed people. Unearned suffering is redemptive. -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Our task is not to liberate the oppressed, but to liberate the oppressors -- Nelson Mandela
Never befriend the oppressed unless you are prepared to take on the oppressor. -- Ogden Nash
A society is only as free as its most oppressed and afflicted members. -- Silvia Tennenbaum
If blacks are oppressed in America, why isnâ??t there a black exodus? -- David Horowitz
Certain members of the oppressor class join the oppressed in their struggle for liberation. -- Paulo Freire
I believe in self-defense and self-determination for Africans and other oppressed people in America. -- Assata Shakur
To see eternity was to be exposed to eternity's whims, oppressed by endless dimensions. -- Frank Herbert
Non Violence and Religion: Both designed to keep the oppressed from murdering their oppressors. -- Darnell Lamont Walker
The Bible has been the Magna Carta of the poor and of the oppressed. -- Thomas Huxley
To be a Jew means always being with the oppressed and never the oppressors. -- Marek Edelman
An oppressed people are authorized whenever they can to rise and break their fetters. -- Henry Clay
Poor little Foal of an oppressed race! I love the languid patience of thy face. -- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Heavy thoughts bring on physical maladies; when the soul is oppressed so is the body. -- Martin Luther
Weak and oppressed nations are fundamentally spiritual; strong nations are, as a rule, chiefly materialistic. -- Ameen Rihani
A liberation movement that is nonviolent sets the oppressor free as well as the oppressed. -- Barbara Deming
The Catholics had been in the position of oppressors, and the Protestants of the oppressed -- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
[All] the manly virtues were oppressed by the servile and pusillanimous reign of the monks. -- Edward Gibbon
all theology knowingly or not is by definition always engaged for or against the oppressed. -- Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza
The rage of the oppressed is never the same as the rage of the privileged. -- bell hooks
Revolutionary constituencies always involve a tacit alliance between the least alienated and the most oppressed. -- David Graeber
the more we are oppressed by the cross, the fuller will be our spiritual joy. -- John Calvin
Perhaps the greatest consolation of the oppressed is to consider themselves superior to their tyrants. -- Julien Green
I am oppressed with a dread of living forever. That is the only disadvantage of vegetarianism. -- George Bernard Shaw
God wants to set the oppressed free from being oppressed and the oppressors free from oppressing. -- Desmond Tutu
The only thing worse than an oppressed liberal is the Rino Republican who sympathizes with them. -- Josh Bernstein
The hope of remaking the world is indispensable in the struggle of oppressed men and women. -- Paulo Freire
Hitherto, every form of society has been based ... on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes. -- Karl Marx
The selfish mind is the distracted mind and the distracted mind is the easily oppressed mind. -- Selena Gomez
Youth has a right to go astray now and then Feeling themselves oppressed by the benevolence. -- Georg Ebers
I was oppressed with the sensations I then felt; I sunk under the weight of them. -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Jerusalem the golden, with milk and honey blessed, beneath thy contemplation sink heart and voice oppressed. -- John Mason Neale
Helping othersI order you to assist any oppressed person, whether he is a Moslem or not. -- Idries Shah
How can the oppressed, as divided, unauthentic beings, participate in developing the pedagogy of their liberation? -- Paulo Freire
Or art thou but / A dagger of the mind, a false creation, / Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain? -- William Shakespeare
Religion is against women's rights and women's freedom. In all societies women are oppressed by all religions. -- Taslima Nasrin
The man of courage thinks not of himself. Help the oppressed and put thy trust in God. -- Friedrich Schiller
The grave unites; where e'en the great find rest, And blended lie th' oppressor and th' oppressed! -- Alexander Pope
The oppressed, having internalized the image of the oppressor and adopted his guidelines, are fearful of freedom. -- Paulo Freire

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