William T. Vollmann Quotes

Black people have always been used as a buffer in this country between powers to prevent class war.

A wild Indian, to reach the civilized world, must needs travel some thousands of miles in vehicles of conveyance, to which he is unaccustomed -- through latitudes and longitudes which are new to him -- living on food that he is unused to -- stared and gazed at by the thousands and tens of thousands whom he cannot talk to -- his heart grieving and his body sickening at the exhibition of white men's wealth and luxuries, which are enjoyed on the land, and over the bones of his ancestors. And at the end of his journey he stands (like a caged animal) to be scanned -- to be criticized -- to be pitied -- and heralded to the world as a mute -- as a brute, and a beggar.

Sex and race, because they are easy, visible differences, have been the primary ways of organizing human beings into superior and inferior groups, and into the cheap labor on which this system still depends.

I think that the dehumanization of another person can happen in the matter of an instant.

The individual mirrors in his individuation the preordained social laws of exploitation, however mediated.

What you're saying is that 'I, the superior elite, will take care of you.' Why? Because, you see, that superior, elite group needs to feel superior and elite. And they can't be superior and elite unless you have a whole lot of people down there groveling around. So you keep them down there by feeding them.

It's a really subtle kind of thing. It makes me feel like Randy Harrison is not a human being to them.

To hold a people in oppression you have to convince them first that they are supposed to be oppressed.

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.

I'd always been treated like an object, not like a human.

I think the world of 'District 9' has a lot of race and oppression-based ideas that I would still like to explore in that world.

Race is not particularly interesting to me. Power is. Who has power and who doesn't. Slavery interests me because it's an incredible violation that has not stopped. It's necessary to talk about that. Race is a diversion.

I remember being taught my place.

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

What are your masses [of humanity] but mud to be ground underfoot, fuel to be burned for those who deserve it?

They who have put out the people's eyes reproach them for their blindness.

Whenever there are enclosing walls, there are abuses behind them.

An issue between a people and a class

Brother! We have, as your friends, fought by your side, and have poured out our blood in your defense, but our arms are now broken. You have grown large. My people have become small, and there are none who take pity on them.

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

Things like putting around a list and having your name on a list that objectifies you, that's a big deal, and it can have big consequences.

When humans invented material inequality, they came up with a way of subjugating the low-ranking like nothing ever seen before in the primate world.

This is true across every single society; we project grossness onto a racial or gender subgroup or caste. A big part of social subordination and discrimination is to ascribe hyper-animality to other groups and use that as an excuse for subordinating them further.

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

It is not, truly speaking, the labour that is divided; but the men: divided into mere segments of men - broken into small fragments and crumbs of life, so that all the little piece of intelligence that is left in a man is not enough to make a pin, or a nail, but exhausts itself in making the point of a pin or the head of a nail.