Molly Ivins Quotes

Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.

When satire is aimed at the powerless, it is not only cruel - it's vulgar.

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.

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

'Game of Thrones' has never much concerned itself with shining a torch on the powerless. Their hunger and suffering in a land ravaged by war is of little concern to the story's most powerful characters, whose antics bring so much pain to the people.

Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful. I only aim at the powerful. When satire is aimed at the powerless, it is not only cruel -- it's vulgar.

Privilege is the greatest enemy of right.

The exercise of power is determined by thousands of interactions between the world of the powerful and that of the powerless, all the more so because these worlds are never divided by a sharp line: everyone has a small part of himself in both.

Twenty years on, the books are still fun to write and I've still got lots of stories I want to tell, mainly about social injustice and people chewed up by the system.

Most men today cannot conceive of a freedom that does not involve somebody's slavery.

Every social injustice is not only cruel, but it is economic waste.

The margins don't get erased by simply insisting that the powers-that-be erase them.

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

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.

Revolution by the have-nots has a way of inducing a moral revelation among the haves.

I don't believe that the meek will inherit the earth; The meek get ignored and trampled.

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.

If you're on the side of the oppressor, or you're defending the oppressor, or you're actually trying to humanize the oppressor, then that's a problem.

Super villains and bad guys win in real life.

Awkwardness comes from the realization that, when you look around the world, it's difficult to identify anyone who isn't either the victim or the beneficiary of injustice.

I feel that discrimination and hierarchy is something that people have to face constantly.

The rage of the oppressed is never the same as the rage of the privileged.

We're not children here. The law is-how should I put it? A convenience. Or a convenience for some people, and an inconvenience for other people.

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.