Oppressed Quotes

I feel that man-hating is an honorable and viable political act, that the oppressed have a right to class-hatred against the class that is oppressing them.

It is startling to see how the oppressed almost invariably shape themselves in the image of their hated oppressors.

In the long run even the most despotic governments with all their brutality and cruelty are no match for ideas. Eventually the ideology that has won the support of the majority will prevail and cut the ground from under the tyrants feet. Then the oppressed many will rise in rebellion and overthrow their masters.

It is doubtful if the oppressed ever fight for freedom. They fight for pride and power — power to oppress others. The oppressed want above all to imitate their oppressors; they want to retaliate.

Only the tortured can understand those who have been tortured.

If the oppressor uses peaceful means, the oppressed will never resort to violence. But if the oppressor uses violence, then the oppressed have no other alternative than violence—to retaliate with similar forms.

Fear and Hope — those are the names of the two great passions which rule the race of man, and with which revolutionists have to deal; to give hope to the many oppressed and fear to the few oppressors

The oppressed have no alternative—for they have no power—but to fight.

It was a place that is trying to destroy the individual by every means possible; trying to break his spirit, so that he accepts that he is No. 6 and will live there happily as No. 6 for ever after. And this is the one rebel that they can't break.

With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence? How could they be the sponsors of something objective whose objective inauguration called forth their existence as oppressed? There would be no oppressed had there been no prior of violence to establish their subjugation.

A slave-owner who through cunning and violence shackles a slave in chains, and a slave who through cunning or violence breaks the chains – let not the contemptible eunuchs tell us that they are equals before a court of morality!

A single good government becomes... a blessing to the whole earth, its welcome to the oppressed restraining within certain limits the measure of their oppressions. But should even this be counteracted by violence on the right of expatriation, the other branch of our example then presents itself for imitation: to rise on their rulers and do as we have done.

Those that have so much power over others as to be able to oppress them have seldom so much over themselves as not to oppress.

Take sides. Neutrality always serves the oppressor and never the oppressed.

A refuge for the oppressed from every land and clime.

I began to realise that we are all oppressed which is why I would like to do something about it, though I'm not sure where my place is.

I pity the poor in bondage that have none to help them: that is why I am here; not to gratify any personal animosity, revenge or vindictive spirit. It is my sympathy with the oppressed and the wronged, that are as good as you and as precious in the sight of God.

Our enemies are Medes and Persians, men who for centuries have lived soft and luxurious lives; we of Macedon for generations past have been trained in the hard school of danger and war. Above all, we are free men, and they are slaves.

Go out and speak for the inarticulate and submerged.

There is scarce a poor man in England of forty years of age, I will venture to say who has not in some part of his life felt himself most cruelly oppressed by this ill-contrived law of settlement.

It is only the oppressed who, by freeing themselves, can free their oppressors.

I knew as well as I knew anything that the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed.

God never made a tyrant, or a slave.

I don't think Dr. King helped racial harmony, I think he helped racial justice. What I profess to do is help the oppressed and if I cause a load of discomfort in the white community and the black community, that in my opinion means I'm being effective, because I'm not trying to make them comfortable. The job of an activist is to make people tense and cause social change.

Not everyone is comfortable with being pushed.