Such a pattern to the oppression exposes the absurdity of the ‘forgive and forget’ brigade. For if the savages who are called up to preside over the destruction of democracy, the mockery of the rule of law, and racist terror can get away with it, if they are never made to answer for their barbarism, let alone be punished for it, then the consequence is absolutely plain. They will do so again, and again and again, confident in the knowledge that if and when their tyrannies run out of steam or are overthrown, their successors will cover them in the milk of kindness, make them senators, put them up in the London Clinic and even allow them to delete their names from the catalogue of their atrocities. Paul Foot, No Time to Make Up
If you object to unfair treatment, you’re an ingrate. If you seek equity and fair consideration, you’re uppity. If you demand union security, you’re un-American. If you rebel against repressive management tactics, they will lynch and scalp you. But if you are passive and patient, they will take advantage of both. William Clay senior, congressman to AFL-CIO Federation of Government Employees, 1975
Workers of the world awaken. Break your chains, demand your rights. All the wealth you make is taken by exploiting parasites. Shall you kneel in deep submission from your cradle to your grave? Is the height of your ambition to be a good and willing slave? Joe Hill
The laboring man ... ought to remember that all who labor are their brothers, and that all women who labor are their sisters, and whenever one class of workingmen or workingwomen is oppressed all other laborers ought to stand by the oppressed class. Robert Ingersoll, essay Eight Hours Must Come 1890
Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else. But I’ll tell you what they don’t want. They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well-informed well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that ... They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard thirty fucking years ago. They don’t want that. Do you know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And now they’re coming for your social security money. They want your fucking retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And do you know something – they’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you sooner or later ’cause they own this fucking place. It’s a big club. And you ain’t in it! You and I are not in the big club! By the way, it’s the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe ... what to think and what to buy. The table is tilted, folks. The game is rigged. And nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. Good honest hard-working people ... continue – and these are people of modest means – who continue to elect these rich cocksuckers who don’t give a fuck about them. They don’t give a fuck about you. They don’t give a fuck about you. They don’t care about you. At all. At all. At all. George Carlin, Who Really Controls America
Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear. Harry S Truman, 1950
The people are weary of being oppressed, persecuted, exploited to the maximum. They are weary of the wretched selling of their labour-power day after day – faced with the fear of joining the enormous mass of unemployed – so that the greatest profit can be wrung from each human body, profit later squandered in the orgies of the masters of capital. Che Guevara
As Marxists we have maintained that peaceful coexistence among nations does not encompass coexistence between the exploiters and the exploited, between the oppressors and the oppressed. Che Guevara
Revolution is the festival of the oppressed. Germaine Greer
The few own the many because they possess the means of livelihood of all ... The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labour. The majority of mankind are working people. So long as their fair demands – the ownership and control of their livelihoods – are set at naught, we can have neither men’s rights nor women’s rights. The majority of mankind is ground down by industrial oppression in order that the small remnant may live in ease. Helen Keller
How many people there are that weep with want, or are mad with oppression, or are desperate by too quick a sense of a constant infelicity. Jeremy Taylor, The Rule and Exercise of Holy Dying, 1651
If the oppressed must be alert enough to follow the rulers’ instructions, they are therefore conscious enough to be able to challenge them. Terry Eagleton, Ideology: An Introduction
The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed. Steve Biko, Cape Town, 1971
We must not allow ourselves to become like the system we oppose. Bishop Desmond Tutu
If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. Desmond Tutu
Oppression lays down blood-lust. It lays it down like a wine. Martin Amis, House of Meetings
I do not deny that I planned sabotage. I did not plan it in a spirit of recklessness nor because I have any love of violence. I planned it as a result of a calm and sober assessment of the political situation that had arisen after many years of tyranny, exploitation and oppression of my people by the whites. Nelson Mandela
Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another. Nelson Mandela
All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression. Thomas Jefferson
The world is indebted for all triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression. Thomas Jefferson
Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day. Thomas Jefferson
When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression no matter how holy the motives. Robert A Heinlein
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. Thabo Mbeki
It is often easier to become outraged by injustice half a world away than by oppression and discrimination half a block from home. Carl T Rowan, attributions & variations
He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself. Thomas Paine
A desire to resist oppression is implanted in the nature of man. Tacitus
Let us recognize that we can no longer tolerate violent oppression of women in the name of religion and culture any more than we would tolerate violent oppression espoused by any other bully in the name of a twisted rationale. Ayaan Hirsi Ali
In the past I have defended the right of the IRA to engage in armed struggle. I did so because there was no alternative for those who would not bend the knee, or turn a blind eye to oppression, or for those who wanted a national republic. Gerry Adams
False riches, consisting of money, houses and lands, acquired by selfish means at cost to others and thereafter used selfishly, are almost always used for the oppression of other persons. Joseph Franklin Rutherford
If you want a free society, teach your children what oppression tastes like. Tell them how many miracles it takes to get from here to there. Above all, encourage them to ask questions. Teach them to think for themselves. Jonathan Sacks
I wanted to fight in the Iraq war because I felt like I had an obligation as a human being to help free people from oppression. Edward Snowden
Our foreign policy has made a wreck of this planet. I’m always in Africa ... And when I go to these places I see American policy written on the walls of oppression everywhere. Harry Belafonte
Now I say that with cruelty and oppression it is everybody’s business to interfere when they see it. Anna Sewell
I do feel visceral revulsion at the burka because for me it is a symbol of the oppression of women. Richard Dawkins