Simone de Beauvoir Quotes

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

Segregation is that which is forced upon an inferior by a superior. Separation is done voluntarily by two equals.

However democratic and egalitarian we kid ourselves into thinking society might be, I think that sense of entitlement operates as basically and viciously as it always did.

When you use the term minority or minorities in reference to people, you're telling them that they're less than somebody else.

The sharecropper may lower his eyes, but not because he's less of a man. That's just a condition of society that such things exist.

If we accept the rule of those who think they are the bosses and lords of Mexico, nothing will change for the people on the bottom.

Oppression is more easily endured than insult.

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

The oppressed find in the oppressors their model of 'manhood.'

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.

I'm drawn to the figure of the ungrateful subaltern as a trope in literature. In real life, it is often dangerous to demand more.

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

No privileged order ever did see the wrongs of its own victims.

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.

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.

Twenty years on, the books are still fun to write and I've still got lots of stories I want to tell, mainly about social injustice and people chewed up by the system.

You have to be taught to be second class; you're not born that way.

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

Poor men's reasons are not heard.

The feeling of being an underdog, not belonging, is very much me. You harbour a little feeling of resentment towards the 'upper dog'.

This world is run by people who know how to do things. They know how things work. They are equipped. Up there, there's a layer of people who run everything. But we - we're just peasants. We don't understand what's going on, and we can't do anything.

One of the very basic ideas of Post-Modernism is rejection of arbitrary power structures. Different people are sensitive to different kinds of power structures.

To be a slaveholder meant one had to regard the African American as inferior in every way.

My father is the jailhouse. My father is your system... I am only what you made me. I am only a reflection of you.

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.