Tomas Transtromer Quotes

A man can submit today in order to resist tomorrow. My submission had been such. And because I had not been free to show my real feeling, to voice my true thoughts, my submission had bred bitterness and anger. And there were nearly ten million others who had submitted with equal anger and bitterness.

Revolution is engendered by an indignation with tyranny, yet is itself pregnant with tyranny

I'm not going to sit around and be peace and love with somebody's boot on my neck.

Without democracy there is no freedom. Violence, no matter who is using it, is always reactionary.

Women have to be extremely careful about choosing something that they consider an act of defiance that can really be used to further their enslavement.

The use of force to liberate people is very different from the use of force to suppress or control them, or even to defeat them.

We will bring imperialism to its knees.

If officials are too forceful, people will revolt.

You cannot play the Song of Freedom on an instrument of oppression.

It is repression that creates the revolutionary spirit of freedom.

Popular struggles to bring about a freer and more just society have been resisted by violence and repression, and massive efforts to control opinion and attitudes. Over time, however, they have met with considerable success, even though there is a long way to go, and there is often regression.

There are men put on this earth to make laws designed to break the spirits of men. There are those put here to have their spirits broken by those put here to break them. Then there are those who are here to break the laws that break the men who break the spirits of other men. I am one of those men. - Harry West

Odd how often blood is shed to obtain freedom from those in power. Oppressors must be the most insecure people in the world.

When the fear of jail disappears, repression puts heart into the people.

Whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere, because a man can't ride your back unless it is bent

What was taken by force, can only be restored by force.

I was only a working-class boy from a Nationalist ghetto. But it is repression that creates the revolutionary spirit of freedom.

When dictatorship is a fact, revolution becomes a right.

Against eternal injustice, man must assert justice, and to protest against the universe of grief, he must create happiness.

Revolution is the festival of the oppressed.

The only thing that's going to free Huey is gun powder.

Governments that use violence to stop democratic development will not earn themselves respite forever. They will pay an increasingly high price for actions which they can no longer hide from the world with ease, and will find themselves on the wrong side of history.

We have not forgotten the occupier. We remain a resistance.

It is difficult to violently suppress people in the long run, as the example of the Soviet Union and the Eastern European countries has shown.

The oppressed, having internalized the image of the oppressor and adopted his guidelines, are fearful of freedom.