Sylvia Plath Quotes

This is a hard job to do …. We represent the underdog, and that makes the top dogs angry.

Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily.

However democratic and egalitarian we kid ourselves into thinking society might be, I think that sense of entitlement operates as basically and viciously as it always did.

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.

What we really need to be understanding is that all of these things matter and they all stem from the fact that certain people live with power and authority and they want to maintain it.

As equality increases, so does the number of people struggling for predominance.

I want nothing to do with privilege.

As there is oppression of the majority such oppression will be fought with increasing hatred.

What are your masses [of humanity] but mud to be ground underfoot, fuel to be burned for those who deserve it?

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

the plain fact that throughout the world today organized groups of men by monopoly of economic and physical power, legal enactment and intellectual training are limiting with determination and unflagging zeal the development of other groups; and that the concentration of particularly economic power today puts the majority of mankind into slavery to the rest. But one thing is sure and that is that these ancestors of mine and their descendants have had a common history; have suffered a common disaster and have one long memory.

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.

The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must

In the beginning, all men were alike and they lived in peace and they shared among them what they had. But now there are two kinds of men, the master and the slave. But there are more of us than there are of you, many more. And we are stronger than you, better than you. All that is good in mankind belongs to us.

It is necessary to be very intelligent in the work of oppression.

It is always the right of the mighty which prevails over the weak, and that is very primitive.

The Achilles' heel of the left has been its dependence on menace for power. Think of all the things it can ask for in the name of fighting menaces like 'systemic racism' and 'structural inequality.'

Victimhood, in the intersectional way of seeing the world, is akin to sainthood; power and privilege are profane.

We have never had a society that was truly just. Some groups have always benefited at the expense of others.

I don't know why people like being oppressed.

Super villains and bad guys win in real life.

Men feel that cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is an injustice to equals; nay it is treachery to comrades.

Face it, the system is rigged, and it's rigged against us.

Privilege is the greatest enemy of right.

I think people really need to think what it's like to have all of society arrayed against you.