Top 100 Oppressor Quotes
#1. Time is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. Truth is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. You don't need anything else.
Malcolm X
#2. The oppressor is truly repressed. Their poverty is existential, often surrounded by an abundance of material goods. (Leonardo Boff, p. 179)
Mev Puleo
#3. Feminism, unlike almost every other social movement, is not a struggle against a distinct oppressor - it's not the ruling class or the occupiers or the colonizers - it's against a deeply held set of beliefs and assumptions that we women, far too often, hold ourselves.
Kavita Ramdas
#4. Freedom has nothing to do with having the right to vote for your oppressor; freedom is not having any form of oppression.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#5. You are either on the side of the oppressed or on the side of the oppressor. You can't be neutral.
Desmond Tutu
#6. The oppressed must never allow the conscience of the oppressor to slumber. Religion reminds every man that he is his brother's keeper.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#7. A liberation movement that is nonviolent sets the oppressor free as well as the oppressed.
Barbara Deming
#8. The oppressed always learned from and copied the oppressor. When the tables were turned, the stage was set for another round of revenge and violence
roles reversed. And reversed and reversed ad nauseam.
Frank Herbert
#9. True revolutionary change begins by first challenging yourself -- not the world. Until you own your story and the complexities of your experience, no matter how much you may strain against it, you will still be enslaved -- if not by your oppressor, by your past.
Sil Lai Abrams
#10. Two children of same cruel parent look at one another and see in each other the image of the cruel parent or the image of their past oppressor. This is very much the case between Jew and Arab: It's a conflict between two victims.
Amos Oz
#11. But you have to remind yourself that perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor.
Anne Lamott
#12. Hatred of oppression seems to me so blended with hatred of the oppressor that I cannot separate them. I feel that no other injury could be so hard to bear, so very very hard to forgive, as that inflicted by cruel oppression and prejudice.
Charlotte Forten Grimke
#13. The only question which concerns us here is whether these "educated" persons are actually equipped to face the ordeal before them or unconsciously contribute to their own undoing by perpetuating the regime of the oppressor.
Carter G. Woodson
#14. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.
Elie Wiesel
#15. The Allies had made war on Napoleon as a tyrant and an oppressor of nations; yet once they had got him out of the way, they did him the favor of representing him as the torchbearer of the French Revolution. They did him the further favor of repeating his mistakes and besting him at them.
J. Christopher Herold
#16. P29 - the oppressed, having internalised the image of the oppressor and adopted his guideline are fearful of freedom. Freedom would require them to eject this image and replace it with autonomy and responsibility.
Paulo Freire
#17. The greatest weapon in the hand of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.
Steve Biko
#18. It is incorrect to classify the revolt of the Negro as simply a radical conflict of black against white or as a purely American problem. Rather, we are today seeing a global rebellion of the oppressed against the oppressor, the exploited against the exploiter.
Malcolm X
#19. The people have now come to realize that the only way to deal with the oppressor is to deal on our own terms and this was done.
Bobby Seale
#20. Atonement is a journey of healing that moves from the pain between a victim and an oppressor, through forgiveness, the making of amends, the relief of anger and compassion for the victim, to deep reconciliation.
Phil Cousineau
#21. 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
#22. Beware of the words "internal security," for they are the eternal cry of the oppressor.
Voltaire
#23. Loving confrontation can free both the oppressed from docility and the oppressor from sin.
Walter Wink
#24. The effort to identify the enemy as singular in form is a reverse-discourse that uncritically mimics the strategy of the oppressor instead of offering a different set of terms.
Judith Butler
#25. If you refuse to use physical force, then you will be at the mercy of your oppressor!
Segun Magbagbeola
#26. Silence is consent. And silence where life and liberty is at stake, where by a timely protest we could stay the destoyer's hand, and do not do so, is as criminal as giving actual aid to the oppressor, for it answers his purpose ...
Ernestine Rose
#27. 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
#28. If you are neutral in times of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.
Desmond Tutu
#29. [We need] someone bold, to put himself at the head of the disaffected and rally them against the oppressor. Some great character who could captivate the people ... someone wise who could direct the actions of an unbridled and floating multitude.
Jean-Paul Marat
#30. You know, it's not the world that was my oppressor, because what the world does to you, if the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough, you begin to do to yourself.
James Baldwin
#31. Maine should be pleased that its animal is not a waverer, and rather than fight, lets the primed quill fall. Shallow oppressor, intruder, insister, you have found a resister.
Marianne Moore
#32. What people don't know about oppression is that the oppressor works much harder. You always grew up being told you were not smart enough or not fast enough, but we all lived from the time we were children to beat the system.
Hugh Masekela
#33. The danger of oppression is not just being oppressed, it's becoming an oppressor,
Jon Stewart
#34. Often the oppressor goes along unaware of the evil involved in his oppression so long as the oppressed accepts it.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#35. He that applauds him who does not deserve praise, is endeavoring to deceive the public; he that hisses in malice or sport, is an oppressor and a robber.
Samuel Johnson
#36. Very few men imprisoned for economic crimes or even crimes of passion against the oppressor feel that they are really guilty.
George Jackson
#37. In every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to deceive and overawe the People.
(Canton, OH, Anti-War Speech, June 16, 1918)
Eugene V. Debs
#38. You can't fight and claim you want to be free from the oppressor while still holding tight to things the oppressor gave you.
Darnell Lamont Walker
#39. Forgiveness is commendable, but apply not ointment to the wound of an oppressor.
Saadi
#40. An educator in a system of oppression is either a revolutionary or an oppressor.
Lerone Bennett Jr.
#41. One man is an oppressor because many are slaves; let us despise the slaves.
James Allen
#42. Martin Buber said he sensed a rising hunger for relatedness Men would no longer rise in rebellion merely against one oppressor or another but against the distortion of a great yearning, 'the effort towards community.'
Marilyn Ferguson
#43. No sincere desire of doing good need make an enemy of a single human being; that philanthropy has surely a flaw in it which cannot sympathize with the oppressor equally as with the oppressed.
James Russell Lowell
#44. What hurts the victim most is not the cruelty of the oppressor, but the silence of the bystander.
Elie Wiesel
#45. all over the world wars
people plagued
by the same ills as their oppressor
the real revolution is
to love myself.
Pamela Sneed
#46. To be an oppressor is dehumanizing and anti-human in nature, as it is to be a victim.
Bell Hooks
#48. The grave unites; where e'en the great find rest, And blended lie th' oppressor and th' oppressed!
Alexander Pope
#49. At a certain point in their existential experience, the oppressed feel an irresistible attraction toward the oppressor and his way of life. Sharing this way of life becomes an overpowering aspiration.
Paulo Freire
#50. It's our own small voice within that is our oppressor; it says we are not worthy and not powerful enough. Our limited beliefs are the real foes we need to fight and conquer.
Yehuda Berg
#51. Violence just hurts those who are already hurt ... Instead of exposing the brutality of the oppressor, it justifies it.
Cesar Chavez
#52. Where is the man, who, if asked to become a slave, would not hurl back the offer indignantly in the teeth of the oppressor?
Charles Lenox Remond
#53. The Negro cannot win the respect of his oppressor by acquiescing; he merely increases the oppressor's arrogance and contempt.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#54. Every revolutionary ends up either by becoming an oppressor or a heretic.
Albert Camus
#55. To forgive an oppressor is oppression upon the oppressed.
Umar
#56. He who has conquered weakness, and has put away all selfish thoughts, belongs neither to oppressor nor oppressed. He is free.
James Allen
#58. Certain members of the oppressor class join the oppressed in their struggle for liberation.
Paulo Freire
#59. When I walked out of prison, that was my mission, to liberate the oppressed and the oppressor both.
Nelson Mandela
#60. Who Rebels? Who rises in arms? Rarely the slave, but almost always the oppressor turned slave.
Emile M. Cioran
#61. The true focus of revolutionary change is never merely the oppressive situations that we seek to escape, but that piece of the oppressor which is planted deep within each of us.
Audre Lorde
#62. PSA72.4 He shall judge the poor of the people, he shall save the children of the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor.
Anonymous
#63. All art must be for the end of liberating the masses. A landscape is only good when it shows the oppressor hanging from a tree.
Ishmael Reed
#64. For the only great men among the unfree and the oppressed are those who struggle to destroy the oppressor.
Walter Rodney
#65. God tends to fight not on the side of the oppressed but on the side of the oppressor because the later has bigger battalions.
Chukwuemeka Ike
#66. The genius of any slave system is found in the dynamics which isolate slaves from each other, obscure the reality of a common condition, and make united rebellion against the oppressor inconceivable.
Andrea Dworkin
#67. We shall never secure emancipation from the tyranny of the white oppressor until we have achieved it in our own souls.
W.E.B. Du Bois
#68. And the people next door oppress me all night long. I tell them, I work all day, a man's got to have some time to learn to play the tuba. That's oppression, that is. If I'm not under the heel of the oppressor, I don't know who is.
Terry Pratchett
#69. You know, I've never asked why it doesn't offend your feminist principles for me to carry this beast for you."
I look at it as exploiting the oppressor," she said, with a sweet smile.
Justin Gustainis
#70. If the mind, which rules the body, ever forgets itself so far as to trample upon its slave, the slave is never generous enough to forgive the injury, but will rise and smite its oppressor.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#71. It must be remembered that the oppressed and the oppressor are bound together within the same society; they accept the same criteria, they share the same beliefs, they both alike depend on the same reality.
James Baldwin
#72. If you are blaming the oppressed rather than the oppressor you know that something is wrong.
Adam Snowflake
#73. The oppressed must cry out to God.
The oppressor must repent of his sins.
The liberated must give thanks.
Matshona Dhliwayo
#74. A freedom fighter learns the hard way that it is the oppressor who defines the nature of the struggle,and the oppressed is often left no recourse but to use methods that mirror those of the oppressor.At a point, one can only fight fire with fire
Nelson Mandela
#75. We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#76. Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be taken by the oppressed.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#78. Envy thou not the oppressor, And choose none of his ways. - Proverbs 3:31
James Ellroy
#79. I could think of nothing but the loneliness, of being stuck in that glass room with only OCD for company. OCD, the bully; OCD, the oppressor; OCD, the destroyer of lives; OCD.
Ben Gander
#80. Revolution is born as a social entity within the oppressor society.
Paulo Freire
#81. The oppressed, having internalized the image of the oppressor and adopted his guidelines, are fearful of freedom.
Paulo Freire
#82. Come, all ye lovers of liberty, break the oppressor's rod, loose the iron grasp of mobocracy, and bring to condign punishment all those who trample under foot the glorious Constitution and the people's rights.
Joseph Smith Jr.
#83. I pray for all of us, oppressor and friend,
that together we may succeed in building a better world
through human understanding and love,
and that in doing so we may reduce
the pain and suffering of all sentient beings.
Dalai Lama XIV
#84. Matter of internal security - the age-old cry of the oppressor.
Picard
Gene Roddenberry
#85. Freedom is about life or death, I would rather die fighting for it than die running away from the oppressor
Peter Mutanda
#86. If you advise someone on the condition that they have to accept it, then you are an oppressor.
Ibn Hazm
#87. The act of claiming an identity can be transformational. It can provide healing and empowerment. It can weld solidarity within a community. And, perhaps most importantly, it can diminish power from an oppressor, a dominant group.
Simon Tam
#88. From Aus B. Shurahbil" He heard Allah Messenger say: "One who strives to strengthen an oppressor and knows he is an oppressor has already left Islam.
Baihaqi
Ahmad Von Denffer
#89. Be persecuted, rather than be a persecutor. Be crucified, rather than be a crucifier. Be treated unjustly, rather than treat anyone unjustly. Be oppressed, rather than be an oppressor. Be gentle rather than zealous. Lay hold of goodness, rather than justice.
Isaac Of Nineveh
#90. But nonviolence was never for the oppressor; it was for the oppressed.
Nikki Giovanni
#91. Each and every one of us has the capacity to be an oppressor. I want to encourage each and everyone of us to interrogate how we might be an oppressor and how we might be able to become liberators for ourselves and for each other.
Laverne Cox
#92. Power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed.
Wally Lamb
#93. The behavior and reactions of the oppressed, which lead the oppressor to practice cultural invasion, should evoke from the revolutionary a different theory of action. What distinguishes revolutionary leaders from the dominant elite is not only their objectives, but their procedures.
Paulo Freire
#94. The ignorance of the oppressed is strength for the oppressor.
A.R. Bernard
#95. Swords could also be used for freeing. You could've cut through the chain around the bird's foot and set it free. Swords could be used for killing. But it needn't be the bird. Wouldn't the more merciful choice have been to use the sword against the oppressor?
Roshani Chokshi
#96. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.
Elie Wiesel
#97. The oppressor has always indoctrinated the weak with his interpretation of the crimes of the strong.
Carter G. Woodson
#98. The idea that the Internet favors the oppressed rather than the oppressor is marred by what I call cyber-utopianism: a naive belief in the emancipatory nature of online communication that rests on a stubborn refusal to admit its downside.
Evgeny Morozov
#99. How the hell can you be liberated and accept alimony?" I said.
Again the smile, innocent, beautiful, glorious, and satanic. "Exploit the oppressor," she said.
Robert B. Parker
#100. Moral power is always more dangerous to an oppressor than political force.
Mary Brave Bird
