Corazon Aquino Quotes

The common people have no history: persecuted by the present, they cannot think of preserving the memory of the past.

All of my plays are about people who have been marginalized... erased from the public record.

You're going to relegate my history to a month.

Oppression doesn't disappear just because you decided not to teach us that chapter.

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

The way the Establishment deals with people like me is to ignore them. When you become unignorable, they will try to smear you, and that's what I feared for a long time. Now I have somehow vaulted into this space where it's difficult for someone to smear me because it would look as though they were being vindictive and spiteful.

If what I read doesn't reflect my life - whether I'm gay or Latino or on welfare - doesn't that really mean that my life is not valuable?

The feeling of being an underdog, not belonging, is very much me. You harbour a little feeling of resentment towards the 'upper dog'.

Lists are anti-democratic, discriminatory, elitist, and sometimes the print is too small.

You should read history and look at ostracism, persecution, martyrdom, and that kind of thing. They always happen to the best men, you know.

Too often a story is examined through biased eyes, without a sensitivity for everyone who forged it. It's seen from the point of view of the great white savior, and rarely is the perspective of the slave a part.

The history of an oppressed people is hidden in the lies and the agreed-upon myth of its conquerors.

By us, and not for us

Not a single one, not a single one among us [French Canadians], in 200 years, has won a battle... and this is what it is to be colonized! When we have but martyrs! How can we have aspirations!? How can we have the will to fight!?

The historian’s imperative has no teeth.

Race, class, and gender in our heritage, in our history as people of America, have intermingled and interpenetrated in dazzling, complex, destructive, and empowering ways. Figuring these ways out constitutes a major preoccupation of the discipline of history.

Those in power write the history; those who suffer write the songs.

From the day I was born, there has always existed a huge disconnect between the stories often told by the elite and those I hear from ordinary people about our country although we live in the places; and witness the same events around us.

Oppression is but another name for irresponsible power, if history is to be trusted.

The histories of mankind that we possess are histories only of the higher class.

The only justification for repressive institutions is material and cultural deficit. But such institutions, at certain stages of history, perpetuate and produce such a deficit, and even threaten human survival.

There's a belonging problem in Hollywood. Who dictates who belongs? The very body who dictates that looks all one way.

I think history repeats itself. There's a constant conversation between the oppressed and the oppressor. No matter what your field is, whether it's gender equality, the Time's Up movement, or diversity casting, it's always going to be a back-and-forth battle.

I thought about all those people whose suffering had been erased, and I thought, 'Why can't they speak? Why can't I undo some of that erasure?'

I know that when we deprive communities of their voice, it can be dangerous.