Quotes About Oppressed

#1. Some of the best art occurs when people are oppressed. That's just what we do as a species when something shakes us up.

Pharrell Williams

#2. The hope of remaking the world is indispensable in the struggle of oppressed men and women.

Paulo Freire

#3. Isaiah 58:6 Is not this the fast that I have chosen? To loose the bands of wickedness,to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and ye break every yoke?

Anonymous

#4. As a black woman, my politics and political affiliation are bound up with and flow from participation in my people's struggle for liberation, and with the fight of oppressed people all over the world against American imperialism.

Angela Davis

#5. The oppressed never free themselves - they do not have the necessary strengths.

Clare Boothe Luce

#6. Our late Leader, Dr. Sun Yat-sen, with his universal sympathy for all oppressed and his profound understanding of Jesus' revolutionary spirit of love and sacrifice, carried on his revolutionary work for forty years and brought about at last the liberation of the Chinese people.

Chiang Kai-shek

#7. The selfish mind is the distracted mind and the distracted mind is the easily oppressed mind.

Selena Gomez

#8. Do not let the oppressed turn away in shame; let the poor and needy praise Your name. Psalm 74:21

Beth Moore

#9. The Theatre of the Oppressed is theatre in this most archaic application of the word. In this usage, all human beings are Actors (they act!) and Spectators (they observe!).

Augusto Boal

#10. We need more radicalism among us before we can speak as becomes a suffering, oppressed, and persecuted people.

Charles Lenox Remond

#11. The right of revolution is an inherent one. When people are oppressed by their government, it is a natural right they enjoy to relieve themselves of oppression, if they are strong enough, whether by withdrawal from it, or by overthrowing it and substituting a government more acceptable.

Ulysses S. Grant

#12. I am for the largest liberty for the poor man -- for the oppressed.

Lewis Tappan

#13. Many slaves on this continent are oppressed, and their cries have reached the ears of the Most High. Such are the purity and certainty of his judgments, that he cannot be partial in our favor.

John Woolman

#14. May our land be a land of liberty, the seat of virtue, the asylum of the oppressed, a name and a praise in the whole Earth, until the last shock of time shall bury the empires of the whole world in one common undistinguished ruin!

Joseph Warren

#15. The subtlest and most vicious aspect of women's oppression is that we have been conditioned to believe we are not oppressed, blinded so as not to see our own condition.

Robin Morgan

#16. By what right can we call this a system of "corrections"? Is it not, rather, the rubric for a slavishly obedient, oppressed, and humiliated existence?

Slavoj Zizek

#17. The greatest humanistic and historical task of the oppressed: to liberate themselves ...

Paulo Freire

#18. Real life oppressed me with its novelty so much that I could hardly breathe.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#19. No, I was not going to work. I was an artist, a lover, a lover of women, of the oppressed and downtrodden, a warrior really. I should have been somewhere leading an armed revolution in the name of love and no, I was not going to work.

Michelle Tea

#20. Some people are afraid of generosity. They feel they will be taken advantage of or oppressed. In cultivating generosity, we are only oppressing our greed and attachment. This allows our true nature to come out and become lighter and freer.

Ajahn Chah

#21. The cry of the oppressed has entered not only into my ears, but into my soul, so that while I live, I cannot hold my peace.

Elijah Parish Lovejoy

#22. That cry of the soul to be lifted out of the bondage of the narrow circle of life, which carries up to God the protest and yearning of suffering man, never finds a more sublime expression than where humanity is oppressed and religion is corrupt.

Hall Caine

#23. The Bible has been the Magna Carta of the poor and of the oppressed.

Thomas Huxley

#24. It doesn't do any good to just be on the side of black people. The funnier comedic position is to be on the side of oppressed people in general.

W. Kamau Bell

#25. I want to be the voice of the people; black, white, everyday, oppressed people. A person trying to make it and to do it right.

Common

#26. The Palestinian cause is not a cause for Palestinians only, but a cause for every revolutionary, wherever he is, as a cause of the exploited and oppressed masses in our era.

Ghassan Kanafani

#27. Weak and oppressed nations are fundamentally spiritual; strong nations are, as a rule, chiefly materialistic.

Ameen Rihani

#28. When you are praying alone, and your spirit is dejected, and you are wearied and oppressed by your loneliness, remember then, as always, that God the Trinity looks upon you with eyes brighter than the sun; also all the angels, your own Guardian Angel, and all the Saints of God.

John Of Kronstadt

#29. When you're that resigned and oppressed you're already dead. It shows the genocide was prepared for too long. I detest this fear. These victims of genocide had been psychologically prepared to expect death just for being Tutsi. They were being killed for so long that they were already dead.

Philip Gourevitch

#30. It could never be a correct justification that, because the whites oppressed us yesterday when they had power, that the blacks must oppress them today because they have power.

Robert Mugabe

#31. 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

#32. Oppressed persons, oppressed cultures, tend to be more political, obviously, as are those with a rage for justice, or the crazy messianic desire.

Gerald Stern

#33. It is with the oppressed, enslaved, African race that I cast in my lot; and if I wished anything, I would wish myself two shades darker, rather than one lighter.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

#34. He was not oppressed by a crowd because in the midst of all the hullabaloo he always found a quiet place for his soul.

Isabel Allende

#35. Those who are most sensitive about "politically incorrect" terminology are not the average black ghetto-dweller, Asian immigrant, abused woman or disabled person, but a minority of activists, many of whom do not even belong to any "oppressed" group but come from privileged strata of society.

Theodore Kaczynski

#36. Humour is the weapon of unarmed people: it helps people who are oppressed to smile at the situation that pains them.

Simon Wiesenthal

#37. Jesus, Your Word says that You came "to proclaim liberty to the captives" and "to set at liberty those who are oppressed" (Luke 4:18).

Stormie O'martian

#38. With my subjects - the thousands of people I have photographed - I have shared the joy of survival, the courage to resist oppression, the anguish of loss, the resilience of the oppressed, the brutality of the worst of men and the tenderness of the best.

Lynsey Addario

#39. Whose life testifies to the truth that there is no shame in being oppressed: Those who should be ashamed are they who oppress others.

Nelson Mandela

#40. The cramped atmosphere of neglect oppressed Phatik so much that he felt that he could hardly breathe.

Rabindranath Tagore

#41. These interests of the workers, as the exploited and oppressed, class of society, are the same in all countries.

Clara Zetkin

#42. The ignorance of the oppressed is strength for the oppressor.

A.R. Bernard

#43. Religious suffering is at once the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of the heartless world, as it is the soul of soulless condition. It is the opium of the people.

John Desmond Bernal

#44. The oppressed people of Palestine, whether those who dwell in that bloodstained holy land or those who continue to bear the brunt of hardship and displacement worldwide, are all in all the victims of Zionist discrimination and aggression,

Mohammad Khatami

#45. I was oppressed with a sense of vague discontent and dissatisfaction with my own life, which was passing so quickly and uninterestingly, and I kept thinking it would be a good thing if I could tear my heart out of my breast, that heart which had grown so weary of life.

Anton Chekhov

#46. 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

#47. Power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed.

Wally Lamb

#48. But love, like the sun that it is, sets afire and melts everything. what greed and privilege to build up over whole centuries the indignation of a pious spirit, with its natural following of oppressed souls, will cast down with a single shove.

Jose Marti

#49. There are 2,000 verses of Scripture that tell us we must be committed to protecting the poor and the oppressed ... There is no concern of Scripture that is addressed so often and so powerfully as reaching out to the poor.

Tony Campolo

#50. I learned from Hussain how to be wronged and be a winner, I learnt from Hussain how to attain victory while being oppressed.

Mahatma Gandhi

#51. The oppressed peoples can liberate themselves only through struggle. This is a simple and clear truth confirmed by history.

Kim Il-sung

#52. The struggle against war and its social source, capitalism, presupposes direct, active, unequivocal support to the oppressed colonial peoples in their struggles and wars against imperialism. A 'neutral' position is tantamount to support of imperialism.

Leon Trotsky

#53. Saudi men have sisters, mothers, and wives, and in my working experience, I have had tremendous support from Saudi men. I really don't think that Saudi women are oppressed or abused.

Lubna Olayan

#54. Chivalry!
why, maiden, she is the nurse of pure and high affection
the stay of the oppressed, the redresser of grievances, the curb of the power of the tyrant
Nobility were but an empty name without her, and liberty finds the best protection in her lance and her sword.

Walter Scott

#55. Hundreds of thousands of American servicemen and women are deployed across the world in the war on terror. By bringing hope to the oppressed, and delivering justice to the violent, they are making America more secure.

George W. Bush

#56. But nonviolence was never for the oppressor; it was for the oppressed.

Nikki Giovanni

#57. American and Israel share a special bond. Our relationship is unique among all nations. Like America, Israel is a strong democracy, a symbol of freedom, and an oasis of liberty, a home to the oppressed and persecuted.

William J. Clinton

#58. 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

#59. Medical science has oppressed us with a new huge burden of longevity. It is in that last undesired decade, when passion is cold, appetites feeble, curiosity dulled and experience has begotten cynicism, that accidia lies in wait as the final temptation to destruction.

Evelyn Waugh

#60. 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

#61. Art is on the side of the oppressed. Think before you shudder at the simplistic dictum and its heretical definition of the freedom of art. For if art is freedom of the spirit, how can it exist within the oppressors?

Edith Wharton

#62. In the Bible, God offered the Pharaoh freedom if he would just let the oppressed people free to go to the land of milk and honey. But the Pharaoh disobeyed, and he was destroyed.

Malcolm X

#63. Revolution is the festival of the oppressed.

Germaine Greer

#64. If the government interferes to such an extent that the weak thrive and the strong are oppressed, society itself will collapse over time.

Amish Tripathi

#65. But this I know. Those who seek Him will do well to look among the poor and the lowly, the sorrowful and the oppressed.

Henry Van Dyke

#66. American Muslims - young American Muslims in particular - are starting to understand that unless they are willing to stand up for all the other oppressed communities in this country, including those discriminated against for their gender or sexuality, then no one will stand up for them.

Reza Aslan

#67. The history of an oppressed people is hidden in the lies and the agreed myth of its conquerors.

Meridel Le Sueur

#68. Kate approved of the child's father, and so did she. Kate all her life had championed the underdog, and so therefore did she. And what more oppressed puppy in all the world was she likely to find than this one?

Dorothy Dunnett

#69. Or as Gabe had done, to rescue your betrothed from some evil force. That appealed to him. But he'd yet to find a damsel in distress, oppressed by evil and in need of rescue.

Melanie Dickerson

#70. Freedom is the very essence of our nation. To be sure, ours is not a perfect nation. But even with our troubles, we remain the beacon of hope for oppressed peoples everywhere. Never give up the fight for freedom - a fight which, though it may never end, is the most ennobling known to man.

Ronald Reagan

#71. Nonviolence is the most potent technique for oppressed people. Unearned suffering is redemptive.

Martin Luther King Jr.

#72. To them she wore the costume of the oppressed from distant lands and was the poster child of backwardness in a forward thinking world. To her, their faces bore the costume of the ignorant, and they were poster children for gross close-mindedness in an open-minded, ever changing world

Umm Zakiyyah

#73. Remember that our Spanish conquerors, for their own benefit, deliberately created an oppressed underclass whose collective psyche became rooted in passivity and underachievement.

Lionel Sosa

#74. In today's world no one is innocent, no one a neutral. A man is either with the oppressed or he is with the oppressors. He who takes no interest in politics gives his blessing to the prevailing order, that of the ruling classes and exploiting forces.

George Habash

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

Paulo Freire

#76. We have successful, strong-willed, independent women who stand up for conservative, traditional values. Women are leading this movement because they've been raised to be unafraid....I didn't grow up feeling oppressed. I didn't grow up feeling like a victim.

S. E. Cupp

#77. Progress is always relative: to the oppressed, it can only be viewed as an all or nothing deal - if oppression continues, even in a modified form, then the system must still be attacked until that injustice is eradicated.

Tim Wise

#78. If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.

Malcolm X

#79. This notion that's peddled by the religious right - that they are oppressed is not true. Sometimes it's a cynical ploy to move their agenda ahead. The classic example being that somehow secularists are trying to eliminate Christmas, which strikes me as some kind of manufactured controversy.

Barack Obama

#80. ACT10.38 How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him.

Anonymous

#81. A second way that oppressed people sometimes deal with oppression is to resort to physical violence and corroding hatred.

Martin Luther King Jr.

#82. As long as human labor power, and, consequently, life itself, remain articles of sale and purchase, of exploitation and robbery, the principle of the "sacredness of human life" remains a shameful lie, uttered with the object of keeping the oppressed slaves in their chains.

Leon Trotsky

#83. As Christians we have a responsibility toward the poor, the oppressed, the downtrodden, and the many innocent people around the world who are caught in wars, natural disasters, and situations beyond their control.

Billy Graham

#84. Poor little Foal of an oppressed race! I love the languid patience of thy face.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

#85. The worries that are the burden of which the privileged person makes an excuse in dealing with the oppressed person are in fact the worries about preserving his privileged condition.

Franz Kafka

#86. Like any oppressed people, they defined themselves by what offended them, which would give New England its gritty flavor and, it has been argued, America its independence.

Stacy Schiff

#87. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

Karl Marx

#88. 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

#89. All art stems from a place of alienation. Intimate and alone. Most people are oppressed by the opinion of others, but I was not that way. I was afraid of the repercussions of not doing what I was told to do, what I was called to do by a creator.

CeeLo Green

#90. If you are blaming the oppressed rather than the oppressor you know that something is wrong.

Adam Snowflake

#91. The oppressed must cry out to God.
The oppressor must repent of his sins.
The liberated must give thanks.

Matshona Dhliwayo

#92. Our struggle has inspired oppressed people the world over, because if former slaves can make the most powerful nation face itself, there's a chance for everyone else. In a twist, our rage becomes hope for others.

Mychal Denzel Smith

#93. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, / because he has anointed me / to bring glad tidings to the poor. / He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives / and recovery of sight to the blind, / to let the oppressed go free, / and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.

Stephen S. Wilbricht

#94. I have made some enemies. My enemies in the southern states consisted of those who oppressed the black slave. My enemies in the north are among those who would perpetuate the slavery of the wage workers

Albert Parsons

#95. [U]nless oppressed groups stick together, and on alliances of self interest rather than do-goodism; nothing can be accomplished in the long run to dismantle the apparatus of oppression.

Shulamith Firestone

#96. Only when we are able to free the oppressed and heal those suffering from the curse of sickness can we really preach Christ's basic message: The Kingdom of God is at hand and the kingdom of Satan is being destroyed.

Francis S. MacNutt

#97. Representation is a crucial location of struggle for any exploited and oppressed people asserting subjectivity and decolonization of the mind.

Bell Hooks

#98. I have lectured at the U.N. and travelled widely, giving lectures on human rights and gender inequalities in universities. But this is a life I do not wish to live. I don't want to be a showcase, I want to be in a battlefield where I can stand beside the oppressed and the poor.

Taslima Nasrin

#99. For there is no sex. There is but sex that is oppressed and sex that oppresses. It is oppression that creates sex and not the contrary.

Monique Wittig

#100. Rise up, O LORD; O God, lift up your hand; do not forget the oppressed.

Anonymous