Quotes About Oppression And Freedom

#1. 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

#2. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state sweltering in the heat of injustice and oppression, will one day be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

Martin Luther King Jr.

#3. As much as the world has an instinct for evil and is a breeding ground for genocide, holocaust, slavery, racism, war, oppression, and injustice, the world has an even greateer instinct for goodness, rebirth, mercy, beauty, truth, freedom and love.

Desmond Tutu

#4. If one prevents a man from working for the good of society while at the same time providing for the satisfaction of his own needs, then only one way remains open to him: to make himself richer and others poorer by the violent oppression and spoliation of his fellow men.

Ludwig Von Mises

#5. It [freedom] is a thing of the spirit. Men must be free to worship, to think, to hold opinions, to speak without fear. They must be free to challenge wrong and oppression with the surety of justice.

Herbert Hoover

#6. States that are built on a religious foundation limit their own people in a circle of faith and fear.

Raif Badawi

#7. Literacy is inseparable from opportunity, and opportunity is inseperable from freedom. The freedom promised by literacy is both freedom from - from ignorance, oppression, poverty - and freedom to - to do new things, to make choices, to learn.

Koichiro Matsuura

#8. 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

#9. The moment we choose to love, we begin to move against domination, against oppression. The moment we choose to love, we begin to move toward freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others.

Bell Hooks

#10. When there is liberty, you expect a higher degree of freedom and not human rights abuse.

Auliq Ice

#11. History has a long-range perspective. It ultimately passes stern judgment on tyrants and vindicates those who fought, suffered, were imprisoned, and died for human freedom, against political oppression and economic slavery.

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn

#12. Since mankind's dawn, a handful of oppressors have accepted the responsibility over our lives that we should have accepted for ourselves. By doing so, they took our power. By doing nothing, we gave it away. We've seen where their way leads, through camps and wars, towards the slaughterhouse.

Alan Moore

#13. Today, I will understand that I hold the key to my freedom. I will stop participating in my oppression and victimization. I will take responsibility for myself, and let others do as they may.

Melody Beattie

#14. Human rights are particularly cherished by the West, which has never acknowledged economic rights. Human rights mean freedom from politcal oppression, tyranny and abuse, while economic oppression, tyranny and abuse are built into the very structures of globalization.

Jeremy Seabrook

#15. Today, as never before, the issue is clearly defined-liberty and freedom of choice, or oppression and subjugation for the individual and for nations.

David O. McKay

#16. It is not enough for a Christian to condemn evil, cowardice, lies, and use of force, hatred, and oppression. He must at all times be a witness to and defender of justice, goodness, truth, freedom, and love. He must never tire of claiming these values as a right both for himself and others.

Jerzy Popieluszko

#17. Before the palefaces came among us, we enjoyed the happiness of unbounded freedom and were acquainted with neither riches, wants, nor oppression.

Tecumseh

#18. Celtic Tiger portrays the oppression of a people and the tiger symbolises the awakening of their Spirit and their struggle for freedom. Celtic Tiger is my finest work to date. Budapest is one of my favourite cities in the world and I can think of no greater place to preview my new show.

Michael Flatley

#19. The freedom we want, for ourselves and for others, is not an absolute metaphysical, abstract freedom which in practice is inevitably translated into the oppression of the weak; but it is real freedom, possible freedom, which is the conscious community of interests, voluntary solidarity.

Errico Malatesta

#20. They have exiled me now from their society and I am pleased, because humanity does not exile except the one whose noble spirit rebels against despotism and oppression. He who does not prefer exile to slavery is not free by any measure of freedom, truth and duty.

Kahlil Gibran

#21. Negative freedom is freedom from - freedom from oppression, whether it's a colonial power or addiction to alcohol oppressing you. You need to be freed from negative freedom. Positive freedom is freedom for, freedom to be. And that's what's routinely ignored today.

Os Guinness

#22. We speak here of the challenge of the dichotomies of war and peace, violence and non-violence, racism and human dignity, oppression and repression and liberty and human rights, poverty and freedom from want.

Nelson Mandela

#23. That frontier operated as a rough and ready homeostatic device; the more a state pressed its subjects, the fewer subjects it had. The frontier underwrote popular freedom.

James C. Scott

#24. It should not be denied ... that being footloose has always exhilarated us. It is associated in our minds with escape from history and oppression and law and irksome obligations, with absolute freedom, and the road has always led West.

Wallace Stegner

#25. The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.

H.L. Mencken

#26. There is no doubt that Iraqis, like Australians and Americans, love and desire freedom. However, if freedom doesn't mean the right to complete self-determination, unfettered by interests other than one's own, then that freedom is less than worthless - it's oppression.

Amir Butler

#27. Ignore the voice that scorns and ridicules to ensure it does not mold you. Stifling subtleties like these, if unchecked, are oppressive. Freedom is a love supreme birthright, not a privilege to be governed by any other.

T.F. Hodge

#28. You don't know what order with freedom means! You only know what revolt against oppression is! You don't know that the rod, discipline, violence, the state and government can only be sustained because of you and because of your lack of socially creative powers that develop order within liberty!

Gustav Landauer

#29. Young people are capable, when aroused, of bringing down the towers of oppression and raising the banners of freedom.

Nelson Mandela

#30. Instead of speaking of justice and injustice, freedom and oppression, classless society and class society, they talked in terms of God and the Devil.

Mario Vargas-Llosa

#31. Freedom cannot be achieved unless women have been emancipated from all forms of oppression ... Our endeavors must be about the liberation of the woman, the emancipation of the man and the liberty of the child.

Nelson Mandela

#32. Monetary freedom (gold: sound money), like all other economic freedoms, clears the way for energy, intellect and virtue ... Political control weakens individual self-reliance and energy, causes want and poverty and, in the end, breeds tyranny and oppression.

Hans F. Sennholz

#33. 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

#34. 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

#35. America is just the country that how all the written guarantees in the world for freedom are no protection against tyranny and oppression of the worst kind. There the politician has come to be looked upon as the very scum of society.

Peter Kropotkin

#36. We humble ourselves under the mighty grace of the Creator. He will deliver us from every chain and oppression.

Lailah Gifty Akita

#37. Freedom from fear and injustice and oppression will be ours only in the measure that men who value such freedom are ready to sustain its possession - to defend it against every thrust from within or without.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

#38. America. The enemy. The rival. The land of jeans and rock and roll, of crime and capitalism, of poverty and oppression. Of home and freedom.

Orson Scott Card

#39. Power in defense of freedom is greater than power on behalf of tyranny and oppression.

Malcolm X

#40. 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

#41. Because to take away a man's freedom of choice, even his freedom to make the wrong choice, is to manipulate him as though he were a puppet and not a person.

Madeleine L'Engle

#42. Peace along with freedom and justice are the pillars for attaining both security and stability and will pave the way towards the eradication of oppression, extremism, and terrorism in our world.

Najib Mikati

#43. You cannot love freedom for yourselves alone and quietly agree to a situation where the majority of humanity, spread over the greater part of the globe, is subjected to violence and oppression.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

#44. When a human being is oppressed, the natural tendency is to feel anger. Jazz is a response to oppression that is not bullets and blood. Jazz is the expression of harmony ... and at the same time of hope and freedom.

Herbie Hancock

#45. In every human Beast, God has implanted a Principle, which we call Love of Freedom; it is impatient of Oppression, and pants for Deliverance.

Phillis Wheatley

#46. Law and freedom must be indivisible partners. For without law, there can be no freedom, only choas and disorder; and without freedom, law is but a cynical veneer for injustice and oppression.

Ronald Reagan

#47. The God of the Bible is the God of liberation rather than oppression; a God of justice rather than injustice; a God of freedom and humanity rather than enslavement and subservience; a God of love, righteousness and community rather than hatred, self-interest and exploitation.

Allan Boesak

#48. This society turns everything it touches into a potential source of progress and exploitation, of drudgery and satisfaction, of freedom and of oppression.

Herbert Marcuse