Dee Rees Quotes

There is always a very delicate interplay between individual actions and institutional conditions. But there is no such thing as institutional conditions without any individual actions and no such thing as individual action without institutional conditions. So there is always personal responsibility.

When a system of oppression has become institutionalized it is unnecessary for individuals to be oppressive.

The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself.

The fight still isn't people of colour versus white. It's the people versus the system built to keep us down. That's the first line of the Constitution. And the system is manmade but is made of no man. Everyone, regardless of class, creed, culture and ethnicity can fight the system and help to break it down.

Wherever you see a man who gives someone else's corruption, someone else's prejudice as a reason for not taking action himself, you see a cog in The Machine that governs us.

In a free society, government reflects the soul of its people. If people want change at the top, they will have to live in different ways. Our major social problems are not the cause of our decadence. They are a reflection of it.

Men do not make history according to their own free will. But they make history nonetheless.

Institutions are more powerful than men.

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.

Just as we demand that people take responsibility for their actions, we as a society must take responsibility for fighting injustice.

We're all about pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps, et cetera - I think that's a harmful mythology, that the choices that we make and the things that we do in our lives are not connected to anything else. So I'd like to help to debunk that.

Freedom will not prevail because of historical forces; it will only win, if it does, because of historical actors. In other words, us. Those like me who came of age around 1989 used to take democracy for granted.

I think something that's really important to me is trying to do what I can from my position of power that comes with having a social media platform to dismantle certain systems that I think are really gross and harmful.

I realised how much the system did not want to change.

Once working people discover that, collectively, we have more power than we do as individual silos, then we become an incredibly powerful force. But I think that there are powers that be that are invested in us remaining divided along racial lines, along economic lines.

There is no 'us' and 'them'; it's an illusion. We are all human beings, and we all have a responsibility to support one another and to discover ways of wresting the power from the very, very few people who control all the cash and all the property.

Young black men in this country have to understand that they have a responsibility. They cannot be the enemy in their own neighborhoods and usurp the effort of good people that are trying to make things work.

It takes time for people to understand how, as an individual, I can have an impact on the way that society works.

Most sports federations, corporations, and governments don't change voluntarily. Change is brought by the disenfranchised demanding better.

I don't want to negotiate with the power brokers in Washington; I want to tear them down.

I don't like to tell people what they should or shouldn't do.

It's really difficult for mainstream - let's say, cable outlets - to talk about things like income inequality, wealth inequality when the advertisers that are funding their shows are the same corporations that want to ensure that the same system continues.

Anticipatory obedience teaches authorities what is possible and accelerates unfreedom.

It will always be important that people continue to push on the system from the outside. It will also be important that people make the changes that we know are necessary on the inside.

I don't know why people like being oppressed.