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I really hate the increasing use of the word vulnerable to describe people who are, more truthfully, oppressed. Frankie Boyle
The oppressor would not be so strong if he did not have accomplices among the oppressed. Simone de Beauvoir
The South Africa government reverted to type, cracking down, ever escalating oppression. Reporting History: Mandela and a New South Africa, BBC 2019
Their widespread and systematic nature indicates a structural pattern: rape is still used as an instrument of war and oppression. Sexual violence is used as a tool by the Burmese military to demoralise and destroy ethnic communities. The Women’s League of Burma, January 2014
Nationalism has a way of oppressing others. Noam Chomsky
Orwell’s 1984 convinced me, rightly or wrongly, that Marxism was only a quantum leap away from tyranny. By contrast, Huxley’s Brave New World suggested that the totalitarian systems of the future might be subservient and ingratiating. J G Ballard
Long time men lay oppressed to slavish fear. Religion’s tyranny did domineer. Lucretius, Ode to Epicurus
Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of the heartless world, the spirit of the spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people. Karl Marx
The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them. Karl Marx
Will religion, the only remaining motive, be a restraint? ... Religion in its coolest state is not infallible, it may become a motive of oppression as well as a restraint from injustice. James Madison
Truth is on the side of the oppressed. Malcolm X
The only way we’ll get freedom for ourselves is to identify ourselves with every oppressed people in the world. We are blood brothers to the people of Brazil, Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba – yes Cuba too. Malcolm X
I believe that there will be ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those who do the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the system of exploitation. I believe that there will be that kind of clash, but I don’t think it will be based on the color of the skin. Malcolm X
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
This is the media, an irresponsible media. It will make the criminal look like he’s the victim and make the victim look like he’s the criminal. If you aren’t careful, the media will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing. This is the sort of propaganda tactic that I would call psychological warfare. Malcolm X
To be, or not to be – that is the question.
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? – To die – to sleep –
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to; ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die – to sleep –
To sleep! Perchance to dream. Aye, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office...’ William Shakespeare, Hamlet, III i 56-73
Women are the only oppressed group in our society that lives in intimate association with their oppressors. Evelyn Cunningham
In the problem of women was the germ of a solution, not only for their oppression, but for everybody’s. The control of women in society was ingeniously effective. It was not done directly by the state. Instead the family was used – men to control women, women to control children, all to be preoccupied with one another, to turn to one another for help, to blame one another for trouble, to do violence to one another when things weren’t going right. Why could this not be turned around? Could women liberating themselves, children freeing themselves, men and women beginning to understand one another, find the source of their common oppression outside rather than in one another? Perhaps then they could create nuggets of strength in their own relationships, millions of pockets of insurrection. They could revolutionize thought and behavior in exactly that seclusion of family privacy which the system had counted on to do its work of control and indoctrination. And together, instead of at odds – male, female, parents, children – they could undertake the changing of society itself. Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States
Then she lay down in the street
Right before the horse’s feet
Expecting with a patient eye
Murder Fraud and Anarchy ...
Tis to work and have such pay
As just keeps life from day to day ...
From the workhouse and the prison
Where pale as corpses newly risen
Women, children, young and old
Groan for pain and weep for cold ...
And that slaughter to the nation
Shall steam up like inspiration,
Eloquent, oracular;
A volcano heard afar.
And these words shall then become
Like oppression’s thundered doom,
Ringing through each heart and brain
Heard again, again, again –
Rise like lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you.
Ye are many. They are few. Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Mask of Anarchy
The man of ease, who, by his warm fireside,
To deeds of charitable intercourse
And bare fulfilment of the common laws
Of decency and prejudice, confines
The struggling nature of his human heart,
Is duped by their cold sophistry; he sheds
A passing tear purchance upon the wreck
Of earthly peace, when near his dwelling’s door
The frightful waves are driven – when his son
Is murdered by the tyrant, or religion
Drives his wife raving mad. But the poor man,
Whose life is misery, and fear and care;
Whom the morn wakens but to fruitless toil
Who ever hears his famished offspring scream;
Whom their pale mother’s uncomplaining gaze
For ever meets, anti the proud rich man’s eye
Flashing command, and the heartbreaking scene
Of thousands like himself: – he little heeds
The rhetoric of tyranny. His hate
Is quenchless as his wrongs: he laughs to scorn
The vain and bitter mockery of words,
Feeling the horror of the tyrant’s deeds,
And unrestrained but by the arm of power,
That knows and dreads his enmity. Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab
Can man be free if woman be a slave?
Chain one who lives, and breathes this boundless air
To the corruption of a closed grave?
Can they whose mates are beasts condemned to bear
Scorn heavier far than toil or anguish dare
To trample their oppressors? In their home,
Among their babes, thou knowst a curse would wear
The shape of woman – hoary crime would come
Behind and Fraud rebuild Religion’s tottering dome. Percy Bysshe Shelley