Harriet Martineau Quotes

Sometimes great injustices may be inflicted on the minority when the majority is in the pursuit of a great and just cause.

Governments oppress people, but so do mobs. You need to avoid both to make progress.

Racism and injustice and violence sweep our world, bringing a tragic harvest of heartache and death.

Minorities…are almost always in the right.

Social change can be painful for all involved—oppressor and oppressed.

Tyranny, Stupidity, and lack of vision have brought about the situation now alluded to as the Indian problem.

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.

Very early in life, it seemed to me that there was a relationship between the problems of the Negro people in America and the Jewish people in Russia, and that the Jewish people's problems were worse than ours.

Racism remains in the eyes of history ... merely another instance of the persecution of minorities for the advantage of those in power.

When I think of our condition, my heart is heavy. I see men of my own race treated as outlaws and driven from country to country, or shot down like animals.

We shall dig our own grave if we do not purge ourselves of this curse of untouchability.

As long as you persecute people, you will actually throw up terrorism.

Alas, the world has never known a sound social fabric, a fabric sound and clean to the core and kindly. For it has ever turned its back on Man.

The prolonged slavery of women is the darkest page in human history.

Most Christian 'believers' tend to echo the cultural prejudices and worldviews of the dominant group in their country, with only a minority revealing any real transformation of attitudes or consciousness. It has been true of slavery and racism, classism and consumerism and issues of immigration and health care for the poor.

No other offense has ever been visited with such severe penalties as seeking to help the oppressed.

Fascism is fascism. Terrorism is terrorism. Oppression is oppression.

People crushed by laws, have no hope but to evade power. If the laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to the law; and those who have most to hope and nothing to lose will always be dangerous.

I think that Jews - because they are a distinct, gifted and successful group that differentiates itself from societies in which it lives - are vulnerable wherever the rule of law is not paramount.

Violence and racism are bad. Whenever they occur they are to be condemned and we should not turn a blind eye to them.

Oppression is something that one group of people commits against another group specifically because of a threatening characteristic shared by the latter group.

There are many different rivers that lead into despair: there's poverty; there's political repression; there's gender apartheid - there's a sense of culture loss; there's religious fanaticism.

It's a very bad thing when people exterminate other people, and people persecute minorities.

There is one, and only one, thing in modern society more hideous than crime - namely, repressive justice.

Where the disease is most deeply seated, there it will be slowest in eradication. In the Northern States it was merely superficial and easily corrected. In the Southern, it is incorporated with the whole system and requires time, patience, and perseverance in the curative process. That it may finally be effected and its progress hastened, will be my last and fondest prayer.