Sydney Smith Quotes

Segregation is that which is forced upon an inferior by a superior. Separation is done voluntarily by two equals.

When you're fighting for economic and social justice, you're always fighting for the minority.

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

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

Oppression thrives on distance - on not actually meeting or seeing the oppressed.

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.

Women are treated differently by society for exactly the same reason that children and the mentally handicapped are treated differently.

Truth is on the side of the oppressed.

When you put a tiny and despised minority up for a popular vote, the minority usually loses.

Often, those with the most to lose as a result of a poor policy move are the most vulnerable and most marginalized. Those folks need a voice, and I will endeavor to be that voice.

We do not yet have justice, equal and practical, for the poor, for the members of minority groups, for the criminally accused, for the displaced persons of the technological revolution, for alienated youth, for the urban masses, for the unrepresented consumer – for all … who do not partake of the abundance of American life.

The concessions of the privileged to the unprivileged are so seldom brought about by any better motive than the power of the unprivileged to extort them

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

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

Heresy is what the minority believe; it is the name given by the powerful to the doctrines of the weak.

I think 'Humans' is more about provoking the idea that there is a class of beings in society that we treat as less than... as subordinates; people who we treat badly and take for granted. Often they are the same people who work hard to keep the city going. We need to think about that.

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.'

Any time something goes wrong, Republicans pick on women and minorities.

I value what I learned from being cast in the margins and what that felt like.

Discrimination will impair democracy.

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

Costs are incurred whenever any group is treated as lesser or the other, whether they are women, racial, or religious minorities, or the LGBT.

Nothing could be more insulting to me than the concept of civil rights. It means perpetual second-class citizenship for me and my kind.

I'm not a member of a minority but I can empathize with what's going on.

I just think the most difficult thing to displace is privilege.