Gloria Steinem Quotes

Logic has nothing to do with oppression.

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

Justice in the hands of the powerful is merely a governing system like any other. Why call it justice? Let us rather call it injustice, but of a sly effective order, based entirely on cruel knowledge of the resistance of the weak, their capacity for pain, humilation and misery. Injustice sustained at the exact degree of necessary tension to turn the cogs of the huge machine-for-the-making-of-rich-men, without bursting the boiler.

I have come to think of violence as a self-perpetuating mania of the power of the aggressive over those less strong.

The strategic adversary is fascism... the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behavior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us.

When people say 'let's do something about it', they mean 'let's get hold of the political machinery so that we can do something to somebody else.' And that somebody is invariably you.

I call the discourse of power any discourse that engenders blame, hence guilt, in its recipient.

The concept of power we admire is power over someone else.

Might was the measure of right.

Why do you all push us around?

Domination delegates the physical violence on which it rests to the dominated.

Slavery takes hold of few, but many take hold of slavery.

And this is the Anarchistic definition of the State: the embodiment of the principle of invasion in an individual, or a band of individuals, assuming to act as representatives or masters of the entire people within a given area.

The strongest and most effective force in guaranteeing the long-term maintenance of power is not violence in all the forms deployed by the dominant to control the dominated, but consent in all the forms in which the dominated acquiesce in their own domination.

Law is merely the expression of the will of the strongest for the time being.

We first crush people to the earth, and then claim the right of trampling on them forever, because they are prostrate.

Don't be deceived. There is no justice but strength.

I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others.

A new kind of slavery will emerge. It will probably adopt the cruelest form of domination the community could impose upon the individual and the state upon the community.

Oppression is the essence of power.

As men could not make might obey right, they have made right obey might.

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

The effect of dominance is not always the result of an intention to dominate.

People who are divided are easier to control.

Keep the masses fed and entertain them to keep them in line.