Alfred Maurice de Zayas Quotes

Too often, systems of oppression turn those who are the targets of the oppression against one another.

There are people in our country, in our communities who are being marginalized and discriminated against every single day. I fight for them.

Anywhere where the humanity of people is undermined, anywhere where people are left in the dust, there we will find our cause.

If given a choice, I would have certainly selected to be what I am: one of the oppressed instead of one of the oppressors.

You have to understand what caused genocide to happen. Or it will happen again.

I see myself in all the people in the world who are suffering and who are very badly treated and who are often made to feel that they have no place on this Earth.

Speaking out is important for me because everyone should be treated equally.

I'm grateful that, after an early life of being silenced, sometimes violently, I grew up to have a voice, circumstances that will always bind me to the rights of the voiceless.

The people of Somalia just do not have a voice. They are to me the most forgotten people in the world.

Persecution produced its natural effect on them. It found them a sect; it made them a faction.

What causes terrorism is disrespect, a lack of justice, and poverty.

There is also a natural and very, very strong empathy with the underdog, with people who have suffered, people who have been pushed around by foreigners in particular, but also by their own people.

I'm the result of upbringing, class, race, gender, social prejudices, and economics. So I'm a victim again. A result.

No change can come if those who are impacted the most by discrimination are not willing to stand up for themselves.

All oppression creates a state of war.

Truth is on the side of the oppressed.

We were not treated by our own government as proper human beings and consequently, some outsiders did not regard us as the same kind of humans as themselves.

I have lectured at the U.N. and travelled widely, giving lectures on human rights and gender inequalities in universities. But this is a life I do not wish to live. I don't want to be a showcase, I want to be in a battlefield where I can stand beside the oppressed and the poor.

Minorities have a right to appeal to the Constitution as a shield against such oppression.

Slavery, racism, sexism, and other forms of bigotry, subordination, and human rights abuse transform and adapt with the times.

A nation that mistreats its own citizens is more likely to mistreat its neighbours.

I don't know if it matters what country you're from, size of the city you're from, urban or rural, there are people that are hurting each other everywhere.

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

I am from the class that has, in a sense, benefited from the status quo, but everyone still gets victimized.

Those who have been outspoken in advocating human rights during these last forty years, have themselves grabbed the most fundamental of human rights from the people of the Third-World countries.