c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
When i ask God why all of these injustices are allowed to exist in the world, i can feel the Spirit whisper to me, ‘you tell me why we allow this to happen. You are my body, my hands, my feet.
— Shane Claiborne, The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
Divide and conquer. That’s the global elite’s proven strategy when it comes to its treatment of Third World countries in Africa and indeed throughout the world. Or, to put it another way, order out of chaos is the global elite’s favored tactic. They engineer chaos by financing both sides of revolutions, movements and civil wars then create order by providing solutions to governments and citizens in these war-torn countries.
— James Morcan, The Orphan Conspiracies: 29 Conspiracy Theories from The Orphan Trilogy
The rights of man are poor things beside the eyes of hungry children. Their hurts are keener than the soreness of injustice.
— Richard Llewellyn, How Green Was My Valley
They say the world has always struggled with injustice and always will. But change is more possible than ever before.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
My savage indignation toward injustice is proportionate to my profoundly reverent connection with beauty.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
Taking a dump...blackout
— Batuhan Ibal
This war ends, then so do the taxpayer-funded contracts, the drumbeats in the media, the nice Combatant faces, and the patriotic cause to lull the civilians and shame the dissenters. The other thing that comes to an end is all the justification for why this country's run the way it is. People will wonder why their paychecks are still getting halved to pay off the men who own their utility companies, their roads, their national parks. They'll wonder why they've got to work eighty-hour weeks to support the folks who took their houses and destroyed the middle-class jobs. There's not going to be an enemy to point a finger at anymore. People will see the real problem.
— S.J. Kincaid
If you grow up in a WEIRD society, you become so well educated in the ethic of autonomy that you can detect oppression and inequality even where the apparent victims see nothing wrong.
— Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion
If thou sustain injustice, console thyself; the true unhappiness is in doing it
— Democritus
And to fight this beast of wrong is what I intend to do. To do otherwise is to sidestp this rabid injustice.
— John-Talmage Mathis, I Deal to Plunder - A ride through the boom town
Such is the condition of organic nature! whose first law might be expressed in the words 'Eat or be eaten!' and which would seem to be one great slaughter-house, one universal scene of rapacity and injustice!
— Erasmus Darwin, Phytologia; Or the Philosophy of Agriculture and Gardening. with the Theory of Draining Morasses, and with an Improved Construction of the Drill Plough. by Erasmus Darwin, M.D. F.R.S. Author of Zoonomia, and of the Botanic Garden.
....because injustice promote brutal and brutality alike.
— M.H. Rakib, The Cavalier
I don't know about you, but I only have one life, and I don't want to spend it in a sewer of injustice.
— Wallace Shawn
At its most basic, the logic of 'meritocracy' is ironclad: putting the most qualified, best equipped people into the positions of greates responsibility and import...But my central contention is that our near-religious fidelity to the meritocratic model comes with huge costs. We overestimate the advantages of meritocracy and underappreciate its costs, because we don't think hard enough about the consequences of the inequality it produces. As Americans, we take it as a given that unequal levels of achievement are natural, even desirable. Sociologist Jermole Karabel, whose work looks at elite formation, once said he 'didnt think any advanced democracy is as obsessed with equality of opportunity or as relatively unconcerned with equality of condition' as the United States. This is our central problem. And my proposed solution for correcting the excesses of our extreme version of meritocracy is quite simple: make America more equal
— Christopher L. Hayes, Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy
I want my children to know what I stood for. I want to be remembered as a person who fought injustice. Suzanne Ahn
— Suzanne Ahn
It is an understatement to say that in this society injustices abound: In truth it is itself the quintessence of injustice.
— Emil M. Cioran
I should not be surprised," said Mr. Graham, "that the day should come when men will refuse to believe in God simply on the ground of the apparent injustice of things. They would argue that there might be either an omnipotent being who did not care, or a good being who could not help, but that there could not be a being both all good and omnipotent or else he would never have suffered things to be as they are.
— George MacDonald, The Fisherman's Lady
How close we can approach the land of happiness with the heavy shackles on our feet of injustice permeated deeply into every corner?
— Mehmet Murat ildan
Joseph’s trials were unjust, inexplicable and heartrending. Yet Joseph knew God, and he knew that God had a plan.
— K. Howard Joslin, Honest Wrestling: Questions of Faith When Attacked by Life
I have no fear of after death life! Even if there is such thing, it is God who should be worried. I am sure I have good reasons to present but I am not sure he might have good excuses for his injustice.
— M.F. Moonzajer
It's no accident that the countries that have enjoyed an economic take off have been those that educated girls and then gave them the autonomy to move to the cities to find work
— Sheryl WuDunn, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide
It's the injustice that I hate, more than anything," he'd said to Smee one night, his eyes red and glassy, slurring his words, his head lolling as he tried to focus. He'd vomited, and then promptly passed out on a bush. "I hate the world that does not work out fair.
— Jodi Lynn Anderson, Tiger Lily
Are all humans human? Or are some more human than others?
— Roméo Dallaire
If you think Atticus Finch went home at night and slept easy because he knew he was doing the right thing, you're wrong....Because even one voice in a wilderness of ignorance is a voice that is heard by someone. Because every woman and man, no matter their color or their religion, is entitled to a good defense. And because Jem and Scout would grow up to be like their father, spreading his wisdom, understanding his compassion and sharing his strength which are the only, the only weapons we have against injustice.
— Kristen Ashley
Beneath that arch of unmoved and eternal lights: some, so remote from this little earth that the learned tell us it is doubtful whether their rays have been yet discovered it, as a point in space where anything is suffered or done: the shadows of the night were broad and black.
— Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
We do not create our destiny
—  we participate in its unfolding. Synchronicity works as a catalyst toward the working out of that destiny.
We often dream about people from whom we receive a letter by the next post. I have ascertained on several occasions that at the moment when the dream occurred the letter was already lying in the post-office of the addressee.
— C.G. Jung, Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle
As soon as we notice that certain types of event "like" to cluster together at certain times, we begin to understand the attitude of the Chinese, whose theories of medicine, philosophy, and even building are based on a "science" of meaningful coincidences. The classical Chinese texts did not ask what causes what, but rather what "likes" to occur with what.
— M.L. von Franz
Intention is everything. If your intention is to find meaning in your life, then your life shall be filled with an enriched sense of purpose and satisfaction.
— Susan Barbara Apollon, Touched by the Extraordinary
There are no coincidences. The universe works in its own way to join those of us who need to be connected.
— Susan Barbara Apollon, Touched by the Extraordinary
Given the fact that intuition is about receiving information and knowledge, something that every human being frequently experiences, the choice becomes ours as to whether or not we honor the incoming information we receive.
— Susan Barbara Apollon, Touched by the Extraordinary
After all is said and done, it is the commitment of love that transcends time and space. So often, we seek answers in places where there is little light. It is when we choose to go within that we find all that we need.
— Susan Barbara Apollon, Touched by the Extraordinary
At some point, when we have been blessed with profoundly moving, touching and special moments, it is important to stop questioning and to begin accepting the gift of the experience. Such moments add only richness and great joy to this journey called life.
— Susan Barbara Apollon, Touched by the Extraordinary
There is no rule that is true under all circumstances, for this is the real and not a statistical world. Because the statistical method shows only the average aspects, it creates an artificial and predominantly conceptual picture of reality.
— C.G. Jung
Love, prayer and miracles go hand in hand. Every great master who has come forth to teach humanity has spoken of love.
— Susan Barbara Apollon, Touched by the Extraordinary
Time is weird. That much is obvious. Sometimes I think everything happens at once, which is anything but obvious and even weirder. I feel sorry for people who brag about 'living in the moment'; they're like people who come into the cinema after the film has started or people who drink Diet Coke—they're missing out on the best part. I think time is like the dial on a radio. Most people like to settle on a station with a clear signal and no interference. But that doesn't mean you can't listen to two or even three stations at the same time; it doesn't mean synchrony is impossible. Until quite recently, people believed it was impossible for a universe to fit inside two atoms, but it fits. Why dismiss the idea that on time's radio you can listen to the entire history of humanity simultaneously?
— Marcelo Figueras, Kamchatka
Modern physics, having advanced into another world beyond conceivability, cannot dispense with the concept of a space-time continuum. Insofar as psychology penetrates into the unconscious, it probably has no alternative but to acknowledge the “indistinctness” or the impossibility of distinguishing between time and space, as well as their psychic relativity. The world of classical physics has not ceased to exist, and by the same token, the world of consciousness has not lost its validity against the unconscious… “Causality” is a psychologem (and originally a magic virtus) that formulates the connection between events and illustrates them as cause and effect. Another (incommensurable) approach that does the same thing in a different way is synchronicity. Both are identical in the higher sense of the term “connection” or “attachment.” But on the empirical and practical level (i.e., in the real world), they are incommensurable and antithetical, like space and time.[…]I would now like to propose that instead of “causality” we have “(relatively) constant connection through effect,” and instead of synchronicity we have (relatively) constant connection through contingency, equivalence, or “meaning.
— C.G. Jung
Synchronicity could be understood as an ordering system by means of which “similar” things coincide, without there being any apparent cause.
— C.G. Jung
We are eternal beings who are connected to God, Source, or whatever you feel comfortable labeling the Divine. What this means is that we are here for joy and for love.
— Susan Barbara Apollon, Touched by the Extraordinary
Extraordinary moments often involve a sense of connection, as well as communication, with something that we intuitively know goes well beyond this plane of reality.
— Susan Barbara Apollon, Touched by the Extraordinary
We are all spiritual beings, having a spiritual experience, while in physical bodies. What this means is that we continue to be through eternity, always changing and expanding. When we accept this, we realize that there are no limitations, other than those that we impose upon ourselves. Mastery is within our power—if we wish it to be.
— Susan Barbara Apollon, Touched by the Extraordinary
Synchronicities then can be said are the product of focused thought which appear as patterns repeating in time. These wheels of time or gears of life then, can only record synchronicites as they occur by consciously manifesting and observing the patterns of behaviour from which they were created.
— L.J Vanier
We need to be open to ways in which we are being spoken to and in which we are receiving some form of communication. Some people call them signs. Open your heart and allow yourself to be touched by them. They are often stunning expressions of your place in the universe.
— Susan Barbara Apollon, Touched by the Extraordinary
The more love we bring into our lives, the more satisfied and at peace we are and the more joy we experience.
— Susan Barbara Apollon, Touched by the Extraordinary
Synchronicity happens when we align with the flow of the universe rather than insisting the universe flow our way.
— Akemi G, Why We Are Born: Remembering Our Purpose through the Akashic Records
What the hell does it all mean? Does 11:11 really mean anything at all? Well, that simply depends on whether you believe life has meaning in the first place.
— Harry Whitewolf, The Road To Purification: Hustlers, Hassles & Hash
The moment you meet your SoulMate is the ultimate synchronicity. Lucky is the person who recognizes in that very moment the intersection of the perfect time, perfect place and perfect person.
— Annette Vaillancourt, How to Manifest Your Soulmate with Eft: Relationship as a Spiritual Path
Aside from actually manifesting your SoulMate, synchronicities, equanimity and gratitude are the three main signs that your inner work is working and you are on the right path to manifesting your SoulMate.
— Annette Vaillancourt, How to Manifest Your Soulmate with Eft: Relationship as a Spiritual Path
I tend to view synchronicities as proof that I am on the right path. It’s like a pat on the back from God.
— Annette Vaillancourt, How to Manifest Your Soulmate with Eft: Relationship as a Spiritual Path
Do remember, though, that sometimes the people you oppress become mightier than you would like.
— Veronica Roth, Insurgent
Voldemort himself created his worst enemy, just as tyrants everywhere do! Have you any idea how much tyrants fear the people they oppress? All of them realize that, one day, amongst their many victims, there is sure to be one who rises against them and strikes back!
— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Leaders who do not act dialogically, but insist on imposing their decisions, do not organize the people--they manipulate them. They do not liberate, nor are they liberated: they oppress.
— Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
People get used to anything. The less you think about your oppression, the more your tolerance for it grows. After a while, people just think oppression is the normal state of things. But to become free, you have to be acutely aware of being a slave.
— Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography
Looking at the past must only be a means of understanding more clearly what and who they are so that they can more wisely build the future.
— Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression. In our Governments, the real power lies in the majority of the Community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from the acts of Government contrary to the sense of its constituents, but from acts in which the Government is the mere instrument of the major number of the constituents.
— James Madison, Letters and Other Writings of James Madison Volume 3
The oppressors do not favor promoting the community as a whole, but rather selected leaders.
— Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
If you're going to hold someone down you're going to have to hold on by the other end of the chain. You are confined by your own repression.
— Toni Morrison
We despise and abhor the bully, the brawler, the oppressor, whether in private or public life, but we despise no less the coward and the voluptuary. No man is worth calling a man who will not fight rather than submit to infamy or see those that are dear to him suffer wrong.
— Theodore Roosevelt
The truth is that every intelligent man, as you know, dreams of being a gangster and of ruling over society by force alone. As it is not so easy as the detective novels might lead one to believe, one generally relies on politics and joins the cruelest party.What does it matter, after all, if by humiliating one's mind one succeeds in dominating every one? I discovered in myself sweet dreams of oppression.
— Albert Camus, The Fall
To simply think about the people, as the dominators do, without any self-giving in that thought, to fail to think with the people, is a sure way to cease being revolutionary leaders. 
— Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Assist your Muslim brother, whether he be an oppressor or oppressed. "Bu how shall we doit when he is an oppressor?" enquired a companion. Muhammad replied, "Assisting an oppressor by forbidding and witholding him from oppression.
— Anonymous
Weight and body oppression is oppressive to everyone. When you live in a society that says that one kind of body is bad and and other is good, those with “good” bodies constantly fear that their bodies will go “bad”, and those with “bad” bodies are expected feel shame and do everything they can to have “good” bodies. In the process, we torture our bodies, and do everything from engage in disordered eating to invasive surgery to make ourselves okay. Nobody wins in this kind of struggle.
— Golda Poretsky
..the struggle to end sexist oppression that focuses on destroying the cultural basis for such domination strengthens other liberation struggles. Individuals who fight for the eradication of sexism without struggles to end racism or classism undermine their own efforts. Individuals who fight for the eradication of racism or classism while supporting sexist oppression are helping to maintain the cultural basis of all forms of group oppression.
— bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center
OppressionNow dreamsAre not availableTo the dreamers,Nor songsTo the singers.In some landsDark nightAnd cold steelPrevail--But the dreamWill come back,And the songBreakIts jail.
— Langston Hughes, The Panther and the Lash
An individual excels where the institution fails.
— Joel T. McGrath
Perhaps Bug and Tony should have been allies. But any successful structure of domination always gets the weak to reject each other.
— William T. Vollmann
No woman is responsible for altering the psyche of her oppressor, even when that psyche is embodied in another woman.
— Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
Oppressed peoples are always being asked to stretch a little more, to bridge the gap between blindness and humanity.
— Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
... [T]he other lesson history has taught us - that tyranny and oppression are no match for compassion ... that the fanatical shouts of the bullies of the world are invariably silenced by the unified voices of decency that rise up to meet them.
— Dan Brown, Origin
By saying that human issues are more important than non-human issues, that violence to humans is more relevant than violence to animals, one forgets that the animal liberation movement implies a message of peace for every being on earth and the opposition against the mindset of oppression. To make a distinction between one violence and another is exactly the root of all violence: Some wouldn't do any harm to those who share with them a flag, a religion, a language, etc. but would easily condemn to suffering and death those who are different. This tragic use of diversity as an excuse to inflict pain on others for a matter of profit and convenience is the cause of suffering for both human and non-human animals.
— Mango Wodzak, The Eden Fruitarian Guidebook
It is not easy to escape mentally from a concrete situation, to refuse its ideology while continuing to live with its actual relationships.
— Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized
And yet it was a fact that if Syme grasped, even for three seconds, the nature of his, Winston's, secret opinions, he would betray him instantly to the Thought Police. So would anybody else for that matter: but Syme more than most. Zeal was not enough. Orthodoxy was unconsciousness.
— George Orwell, 1984
Be calm when the unthinkable arrives. Modern tyranny is terror management. When the terrorist attack comes, remember that authoritarians exploit such events in order to consolidate power. The sudden disaster that requires the end of checks and balances, the dissolution of political parties, the suspension of freedom of expression, the right to a fair trial, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. DO NOT FALL FOR IT.
— Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
And, sincerely, we respect her stance. The Liberal Rednecks are all about standing up for your beliefs even when they’re hateful, bigoted, and go against everything your alleged Lord and Savior stood for. The thing is, doing that would have involved quitting her job—but that’s just something the four-times-married mother was not prepared to do for her faith. Go on TV and be called a hero by powerful politicians who agree with her and her “stand”? Sure, that’s fine. Have the Church pay for her legal bills and prop her up (instead of, oh we don’t know, giving that money to the poor)? Yes, sir. But actually quit instead of breaking an oath (which, by the way, is a sin)? That’s just something Jesus apparently wouldn’t do. Kim Davis is an analogy for Christians at large in the South. She was not oppressed. She was not forced to do anything. She could have quit. The truth is she did not want to quit her job as an elected official. She wanted to bend the political will of those around her so she could prevent other humans from marrying each other because she didn’t like the idea of it. That’s not oppression—that’s someone trying to use the inordinate amount of power they have (over the media and literally as the clerk) to affect the lives of strangers she disagrees with. Guess what that is? Yup. That is oppression.
— Trae Crowder, The Liberal Redneck Manifesto: Draggin' Dixie Outta the Dark
They were erected purposefully to send a strong message to all who walked in their shadows about who was still in charge in this city.
— Mitch Landrieu
The old idea, or rather the old prejudice, that women are protected by men was so deeply ingrained in that society that they overlooked what was the most obvious, that is, that the weakest and the disadvantaged are the most exposed.
— Ruth Klüger, Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered
I was born free, yet today I am in chains. Invisible, they were loosely draped and passed unnoticed until the age of understanding reduced my life to a narrow segment of fear. - Sultana
— Jean Sasson, Princess: A True Story of Life Behind the Veil in Saudi Arabia
When I look at people talking about intersectionality, what I see is the human being magnifying a biological attribute, and then putting them aside, putting them in a corner as victims of oppression....I most certainly don't see myself as a victim.
— Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Mainly, it’s not that there are things you can’t say. It’s that there are things you can’t say without the risk that people who previously lacked a voice might use their own freedom of speech to object.
— Oliver Burkeman
There are no worse oppressors than those who have been oppressed themselves. For they will justify all means of self-preservation, including the persecution and oppression of others to the extent of, and worse than that they had endured. This will weigh heavily on the souls of future generations.
— H. N. Ellessy
I walked and walked, sometimes with an objective- a friend's house, a shop, the church or school- but mostly at random, to outrun oppression.
— Jessica Anderson, Tirra Lirra by the River
No oppressive order could permit the oppressed to begin to question: Why?
— Paulo Freire
In other words, neither oppression nor exploitation as such is ever the main cause for resentment; wealth without visible function is much more intolerable because nobody can understand why it should be tolerated.
— Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
When people have been oppressed for so long
—  they become immune to it.They sometimes see oppression as the alternative means to oppressed others.
When a nation is under oppression for too long, it gets used to it and begins to agree with that oppression
— Sunday Adelaja
Elie Wiesel says that neutrality only helps the oppressor, never the victim. And I think you can apply that to journalism.
— Jorge Ramos
I swore never to be silent whenever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lies are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Whenever men and women are prosecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must--at that moment--become the center of the universe.
— Elie Wiesel, Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech
Not being treated as equal IS oppression
— Christina Engela, Autumn Burning: Dreadtime Stories for the Wicked Soul
The paradigm of Western culture is that the essence of persons is dangerous; thus, they must be taught, guided and controlled by those with superior authority.
— Carl R. Rogers, A Way of Being
Isn't it odd that some groups view being legally equal to other groups as 'oppression'?
— Christina Engela, Blachart
Sometimes, the anger built up so much that people had to scream out their treasonous thoughts just to keep on breathing. Maybe not all of the were really crazy, but it was best for everyone involved to pretend that they were.
— Ken Liu, The Grace of Kings
Whichever group is in ascension at a given moment is, historically speaking, both unlikely to acknowledge the existence of abuses or bias, and also to justify the bias on any grounds they can - social, biological, what have you.
— Elizabeth Bear, Carnival
Christie: “Even if he is – aren’t you the one who’s always saying we shouldn’t trust the wealthy, that they became that way by walking on the backs of the poor?
— William Carmichael, The Missionary
According to court records, during the siege at Wounded Knee, more than two hundred and fifty thousand rounds were fired at our people by U.S. marshalls, FBI agents, the tribal police, the GOONs, and white vigilantes. These boys weren't kidding. And neither were we.
— Leonard Peltier, Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sun Dance
It’s not enough to be oppressed, you must also be in the right. Most oppressed people are in the wrong to an almost ridiculous degree. What shall I believe in?
— Orhan Pamuk
If someone asks you why you're oppressing a world and you reply with a lot of poetic crap, no. I guess there can't be a meeting of minds.
— Roger Zelazny
No, no, my friend. You are kind, and you mean well, but you can never understand these things as I do. You've never been oppressed.
— S. Alice Callahan, Wynema: A Child of the Forest
What is a bird if it can't fly? It might as well be a cockroach.
— Eleanor Morse, White Dog Fell from the Sky
I could reply. I could tell him that a metaphor is inadequate in the face of a bloodbath. That a Platonic inclination for dying doesn't balance out the serious decision to kill. That through the ages there has never been a great historical infamy committed for which there couldn't be found a symbol just as big, to justify it. That, in consequence, we would do well to pay attention to great certainties, to great invocations, to the great 'droughts' and 'rains'. That the temper of our most violent outbursts might benefit from a shade less enthusiasm.I could reply. But what good would it do? I have a simple, resigned, inexplicable sensation that everything that is happening is in the normal order of things and that I am awaiting a season that will come and pass -- because it has come and passed before.
— Mihail Sebastian, For Two Thousand Years
Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people.
— Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right
No oppressive order could permit the oppressed to being to question: Why?
— Paulo Freire
Beauty can make a woman rich, but if she relies solely on her looks to get by, she'll always remain under a man's thumb.
— Ma Jian
I'm all for fighting tyranny and oppression.
— E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly
The blues is relevant today because when we look down through the corridors of time, the black American interpretation of tragicomic hope in the face of dehumanizing hate and oppression will be seen as the only kind of hope that has any kind of maturity in a world of overwhelming barbarity and bestiality. That barbarity is found not just in the form of terrorism but in the form of the emptiness of our lives - in terms of the wasted human potential that we see around the world. In this sense, the blues is a great democratic contribution of black people to world history.
— Cornel West, Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism
[T]he mothers who had sold their children felt empty and sad. They felt as if this act, done freely by themselves (no one had forced them, no one had threatened them) had not been performed willingly. They felt cheated as well, as if the price had been too low. Why hadn't they demanded more? And yet, the mothers told themselves, they'd had no choice.
— Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake
Men often have grievances against prominent and powerful persons. Historically, the grievances of the powerless against the powerful have furnished the steam for the engines of revolutions. My point is that in many of the famous medicolegal cases involving the issue of insanity, persons of relatively low social rank openly attacked their superiors. Perhaps their grievances were real and justified, and were vented on the contemporary social symbols of authority, the King and the Queen. Whether or not these grievances justified homicide is not our problem here. I merely wish to suggest that the issue of insanity may have been raised in these trials to obscure the social problems which the crimes intended to dramatize.
— Thomas Szasz, Law, Liberty and Psychiatry
You should never leave your "house of bread", under any pretence, whether it is oppression, troubles or hardships.
— Sunday Adelaja
I suggested then that the prize was not given merely as recognition of past achievement, but also as recognition, a more profound recognition, that the nonviolent way, the American Negro's way, was the answer to the crucial political and moral question of our time: the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression.
— Martin Luther King Jr.
Saying, “I don’t agree with you,” or going so far as to say, “I think your belief structure is childish,” does not amount to persecution. Insensitivity is not the same as harassment or oppression.
— Gudjon Bergmann, More Likely to Quote Star Wars than the Bible: Generation X and Our Frustrating Search for Rational Spirituality
For every King is right in his own eyes and rests the blame to whoever he wishes to carry it.
— Auliq Ice
... the reigns of the kings and queens who are portrayed as kneeling with clasped hands in the windows of churches, were stained by oppression and bloodshed.
— Marcel Proust, Swann's Way
When you have a hammer in your hand, everything around you starts looking like a nail.
— Auliq Ice
When free men stand, they will always carry on and lift Liberty yet unfree men shall always struggle to fight for freedom and liberty until they attain it.
— Auliq Ice
I am against all kinds of oppression. Poverty, Sexism, racism, terrorism, classicism, imperialism, heterosexism, Cisgenderism, colorism, Ableism, and Nativism. Because it hinder human progression.
— Henry Johnson Jr
There comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression.
— Martin Luther King Jr.
The oppressed, having internalized the image of the oppressor and adopted his guidelines, are fearful of freedom. Freedom would require them to eject this image and replace it with autonomy and responsibility. Freedom is acquired by conquest, not by gift. It must be pursued constantly and responsibly. Freedom is not an ideal located outside man; nor is it an idea which becomes myth. It is rather the indispensable condition for the quest for human completion.
— Paulo Freire
We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone MADE equal. Each man man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against.
— Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man's mind. Who knows who might be the target of a well-read man?
— Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
Being submissive is not being oppressed.
— Unarine Ramaru
P20 - The rightist sectarian wants to slow down the historical process, to domesticate time and thus to domesticate men and women.
— Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
If you are blaming the oppressed rather than the oppressor you know that something is wrong.
— Adam Snowflake
This kind of action is a prevalent error among oppressed peoples. It is based upon the false notion that there is only a limited and particular amount of freedom that must be divided up between us, with the largest and juiciest pieces of liberty going as spoils to the victor or the stronger. So instead of joining together to fight for more, we quarrel between ourselves for a larger slice of the one pie. Black women fight between ourselves over men, instead of pursuing and using who we are and our strengths for lasting change; Black women and men fight between ourselves over who has more of a right to freedom, instead of seeing each other's struggles as part of our own and vital to our common goals; Black and white women fight between ourselves over who is the more oppressed, instead of seeing those areas in which our causes are the same. (Of course, this last separation is worsened by the intransigent racism that white women too often fail to, or cannot, address in themselves.)
— Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
119When you bring together the national security state and the military-industrial complex, when you bring together the prison-industrial complex and all the profits that flow from it, when you bring together the corporate media multiplex that don’t want to allow for serious dialogue... and then, when you bring together the Wall Street oligarchs and the corporate plutocrats, and they tell any person or any group, 'If you speak the truth, we’ll shoot you down like a dog and dehumanize you the way we did to dehumanize the brothers in Attica,' the only thing that will keep you going is you better have some love in your heart for the people.
— Cornel West
What is amazing and revolutionary today will be oppressive tomorrow.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
Resherphire: True freedom is not that which is granted by an oppressor. It is a self-evident right, not something that originates from an external force.
— Angry Zodd, Danny the Last Earth Man
Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. The source of better ideas is wisdom. The surest path to wisdom is a liberal education.
— Alfred Whitney Griswold, Essays on Education
Histories are instruments of oppression.
— Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless
Women are prevented by the threat and reality of male violence from entering public space on equal terms with male citizens.
— Sheila Jeffreys, Unpacking Queer Politics
Women in America read 'lifestyle' pages which are really glorifications of shopping. They teach us we must veil ourselves in make-up to be loved. And we willingly take the veil, thinking ourselves freed by it. Make-up is no more optional for us than the veil is for Arab women: it is our Western version of the chador.
— Erica Jong, Fear of Fifty: A Midlife Memoir
If oppression produced saints, we’d want everyone to be oppressed.
— Christopher Bram, Eminent Outlaws: The Gay Writers Who Changed America
When I was a child, to call someone 'black' was an insult, a curse word, something that made you fight.But to me it contains all of the history of oppression and resistance, of being close to the soil and the sky, of plain speaking. Of The Journey.
— Bonnie Greer, A Parallel Life
Nothing shows a greater contempt for individuality than the train. Modern civilization uses every possible means to develop individuality, and having done so, tries everything in its power to stamp it out. It allots a few square yards to each person, and tells them that they are free to lead their life as they please within that area. At the same time it erects railings around them, and threatens them with all sorts of dire consequences if they should dare to take but one step beyond their compass. It is only natural that the person who has freedom within the confines of their allocated plot, should desire to have freedom to do as they wish outside it too. Civilization's pitiable subjects are forever snapping and snarling at imprisoning bars, for they have been made as fierce as tigers by the gift of liberty, but have been thrown into a cage to preserve universal peace. This, however, is not a true peace. It is the peace of the tiger in a menagerie who lies glowering at those who have come to look at it.
— Sōseki Natsume, The Three-Cornered World
Dehumanization, although a concrete historical fact, is not a given destiny but the result of an unjust order that engenders violence in the oppressors, which in turn dehumanizes the oppressed
— Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
In asking me to contribute a mite to the memorial to Gutenberg you give me pleasure and do me honor. The world concedes without hesitation or dispute that Gutenberg’s invention is incomparably the mightiest event that has ever happened in profane history. It created a new and wonderful earth, and along with it a new hell. It has added new details, new developments and new marvels to both in every year during five centuries. It found Truth walking, and gave it a pair of wings; it found Falsehood trotting, and gave it two pair. It found Science hiding in corners and hunted; it has given it the freedom of the land, the seas and the skies, and made it the world’s welcome quest. It found the arts and occupations few, it multiplies them every year. It found the inventor shunned and despised, it has made him great and given him the globe for his estate. It found religion a master and an oppression, it has made it man’s friend and benefactor. It found War comparatively cheap but inefficient, it has made it dear but competent. It has set peoples free, and other peoples it has enslaved; it is the father and protector of human liberty, and it has made despotisms possible where they were not possible before. Whatever the world is, today, good and bad together, that is what Gutenberg’s invention has made it: for from that source it has all come. But he has our homage; for what he said to the reproaching angel in his dream has come true, and the evil wrought through his mighty invention is immeasurably outbalanced by the good it has brought to the race of men.
— Mark Twain
We stand hand-clasped, our faces quite blank, as if this were not a nightmare that tells me, as clearly as if it were written in letters of fire, what ending a girl may expect if she defies the rules of men and thinks she can make her own destiny. I am here not only to witness what happens to a heretic. I am here to witness what happens to a woman who thinks she knows more than men.
— Philippa Gregory, The Lady of the Rivers
A nation will never be vanished by subjugation or oppression, unless they get used to.
— M.F. Moonzajer
All my contemporaries—hundred-and-fivers or convicts—will tell you how we livedin barely sentient fear, raisingchildren for the executioner,prison, or the torture chamber.
— Anna Akhmatova, Sobranie Sochinenii V Shesti Tomakh
Whenever we use our religion, as individuals, or as groups within the church, to act in tandem with political and economic groups that arrest the voice of truth or destroy others, then we are Judas.
— Megan McKenna, The New Stations of the Cross: The Way of the Cross According to Scripture
Each day of not writing, of comfort, of being that which he despised, dulled his ability and softened his will to work so that, finally, he did no work at all.
— Ernest Hemingway, The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories
Prison is a second-by-second assault on the soul, a day-to-day degradation of the self, an oppressive steel and brick umbrella that transforms seconds into hours and hours into days.
— Mumia Abu-Jamal
If the jury have no right to judge of the justice of a law of the government, they plainly can do nothing to protect the people against the oppressions of the government; for there are no oppressions which the government may not authorize by law.
— Lysander Spooner
O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose, not only the tyranny, butthe tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression.Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia, and Africa,have long expelled her.?Europe regards her like a stranger, and Englandhath given her warning to depart. O! receive the fugitive, and prepare intime an asylum for mankind.
— Thomas Paine, Common Sense
Formerly, many men dominated women within marriage. Now, despite a much wider acceptance of women as workers, men dominate women anonymously outside the marriage. Patriarchy has not disappeared; it has changed form. In the old form, women were forced to obey an overbearing husband in the privacy of an unjust marriage. In the new form, the working single mother is economically abandoned by her former husband and ignored by a patriarchal society at large.
— Arlie Russell Hochschild, The Second Shift: Working Families and the Revolution at Home
I walk the city, through its crush of people and its smells:body odour, rotting food, vomit and urine. A cocktail of oppression and freedom.
— Emma Cameron, Cinnamon Rain
I wouldn't worry about it too much, son. Certainly not about the peasants and the servants. They don't feel things as we do.”“They're human.”“Barely. They might as well be another species. What would happen without us to keep them in check? They wouldn't work the land. They would be at each other's throat if we weren't there to restrain them. Face it, they are driven by their instincts. Granted, that is a generalization, and there are some individuals who rise above that. Personally I think that is how the nobility originated. Even today, with the help of the Gods, hard work and some luck such a man can rise above his station. But as a group…
— Andrew Ashling, The Invisible Chains - Part 2: Bonds of Fear
It requires something more than personal experience to gain a philosophy or point of view from any specific event. It is the quality of our response to the event and our capacity to enter into the lives of others that help us to make their lives and experiences our own. In my own case my convictions have derived and developed from events in the lives of others as well as from my own experience. What I have seen meted out to others by authority and repression, economic and political, transcends anything I myself may have endured.
— Emma Goldman, Red Emma Speaks
In every country where there is a vicious oppression, a peaceful and a continuous civil disobedience is the magical door opening to the freedom!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
The flames had passed over those flattened blades and consumed their heather neighbours on either side while they themselves had remained, made proof against the blaze and guaranteed their stark survival just by their earlier oppression.
— Iain Banks, The Crow Road
If you want a definition of what a coward is, it’s needing to push a whole class of people down so that you can walk on top of them.
— Andrea Dworkin
I was in the kitchen drinking coffee when I heard Coretta cry, "Martin, Martin, come quickly!" I put down my cup and ran toward the living room. As I approached the front window Coretta pointed joyfully to a slowly moving bus: "Darling, it's empty!
— Martin Luther King Jr., The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.
A stab had clearly once been made at de-uglifying these public spaces by painting a corridor a jaunty yellow. This was because, it turned out, babies come here to have their brains tested and someone thought the yellow might calm them. But I couldn’t see how. Such was the oppressive ugliness of this building it would have been like sticking a red nose on a cadaver and calling it Ronald McDonald.
— Jon Ronson, The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry
Christmas has become a public affirmation of the power and benignity of the state, to which we all make obeisance in the sybolism of the breath test ceremony.
— Auberon Waugh
The only time a man can be brave is when he is afraid.
— George R.R. Martin
It is the cause, not the death, that makes the martyr.
— Napoléon Bonaparte
We believe that preparation eradicates cowardice, which we define as the failure to act in the midst of fear.
— Veronica Roth
To not do what you can to protect someone, that's cowardly.
— Jodi Lynn Anderson, Tiger Lily
Dare to Differ
— Matthew Goldfinger
I remember it so well. Dying. It was the most painful thing I've ever experienced. I couldn't scream because my lungs were torn apart or full of blood. I don't know. I just had to lie there, trying to breathe, hoping to drop dead as quickly as possible. And the whole time, the whole time I kept thinking about how I'd spent my entire life being a coward, and how it got me nowhere. And I knew that if I had the chance to do it all again, I'd do it differently. I promised myself I'd finally stop being afraid.
— Tahereh Mafi, Ignite Me
You remember that I told you it was safer not to know. But,' he went on, as his hands moved wuth their sure and practiced motion, 'I will tell you just a little, because you were so very brave.'Brave?' Annemarie asked, surprised. 'No, I wasn't. I was very frightened.'You risked your life.'But I didn't even think about that! I was only thinking of-'He interrupted her,smiling. 'That's all that brave means-not thinking about the dangers. Just thinking about what you must do. Of course you were frightened. I was too, today. But you kept your mind on what you had to do. So did I.
— Lois Lowry
When I am brave enough to say goodbyeI'll use the wings you gave meand away I'll fly
— Celia McMahon
She hadn't chosen the brave life. She'd chosen the small, fearful one.
— Ann Brashares, Sisterhood Everlasting
We created Brave wherever we were brave.
— Katherine Locke
But that’s what makes it so fun! Life is scary. So why wouldn’t we enjoy and make fun of that fear? It’s like life is trying to makes us fear it, and on this day we just mock its attempts and say ‘no, not today, today I’m not scared of anything you throw at me'.
— Patricia Morais, The Roommate
When people told me I was so strong for surviving my daughter’s death, I wanted to scream. But the truth is that deep inside we are far more resilient, brave, and incredibly strong for having survived at all. So scream, be brave, and embrace your power. It will become your biggest asset.
— Lynda Cheldelin Fell
When we write with power and authenticity, it opens the door to our hearts and invites others in. When we're brave, we make others brave. Brave is good.
— Lynda Cheldelin Fell