Oppressed Quotes

“the oppressor would not be so strong if he did not have accomplices among the oppressed”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity

“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

“Just like freedom, Truth is not cheap. Yet both are worth more than all the gold in the world. But what is freedom, if there is no truth? And what is truth, if there is no freedom? Both are worth fighting for — because one without the other would be hell.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“I don't like the way people cherish the ghetto, as if it’s some royal palace, or kingdom. I also don't like the way people treat each other in the ghetto. It is really hard to find love, trust, and respect. You don't find too many people that want to do better for themselves in the ghetto because so many people seem to be satisfied with where they're at.”
― Delano Johnson, Words That Changed the World

“The oppressor shows solidarity with the oppressed only when he stops regarding the oppressed as an abstract category and sees them as persons who have been unjustly dealt with, deprived of their voice, cheated in the sale of their labour — when he stops making pious, sentimental, and individualistic gestures and risks an act of love.”
― Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

“But sooner or later the oppressed class will argue that its superior virtue is a reason in favour of its having power, and the oppressors will find their own weapons turned against them. When at last power has been equalized, it becomes apparent to everybody that all the talk about superior virtue was nonsense, and that it was quite unnecessary as a basis for the claim to equality.”
― Bertrand Russell, Unpopular Essays

“Acts of brutality committed by the ruling elite and systematic oppression of the weak stain every era of civilization. Ethnic wars and religious cleansing still exist in the twenty-first century. Just as insidious as state sponsored murder is the escalating economic expansion that destroys the habitat and displaces indigenous tribes’ way of life under the false moniker of economic and social progress.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Political bodies endlessly debate the pros and cons of every action that will improve the lives of the weak and the oppressed. The resulting legislation is usually a watered down version of charitable actions directed at uplifting the poor. Any government invariably tailors its allocation of resources and alignment of power to protect the pocketbooks of the wealthy and powerful. Consequently, the true benefactors of any government’s socioeconomic programs are prominent people and rich corporations. Thomas Jefferson said, ‘I predict future happiness for Americans, if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Perhaps this was simply how the world was, no matter what? An endless trading of places between the oppressors and the oppressed?”
― S.M. Gaither, The Song of the Marked

“The patriarchy longs for the days ‘when men were men’ and women were oppressed, silent and subservient – and they can see no wrong in it. It justifies its former power and lust to hold on to it – and if possible, to regain it by quoting fundamentalist and radical religion and tradition and while calling it ‘love’. Some love! How can oppression and power and complete control over another person's life ever be ‘love’?”
― Christina Engela, Pearls Before Swine

“Tread very carefully where injustice is concerned, because it takes very little for the oppressed to become the new oppressors.”
― Abhijit Naskar, No Foreigner Only Family

“Union :

Not me alone--
I know now--
But all the whole oppressed
Poor world,
White and black,
Must put their hands with mine
To shake the pillars of those temples
Wherein the false gods dwell
And worn-out altars stand
Too well defended,
And the rule of greed's upheld-
That must be ended.”
― Langston Hughes, The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes

“Fear and Hope — those are the names of the two great passions which rule the race of man, and with which revolutionists have to deal; to give hope to the many oppressed and fear to the few oppressors, that is our business; if we do the first and give hope to the many, the few must be frightened by their hope; otherwise we do not want to frighten them; it is not revenge we want for poor people, but happiness; indeed, what revenge can be taken for all the thousands of years of the sufferings of the poor?

- How We Live and How We Might Live”
― William Morris

“Violence is initiated by those who oppress, who exploit, who fail to recognize others as people - not by those who are oppressed, exploited, and unrecognized. It is not the unloved who initiate disaffection, but those who cannot love because they love only themselves. It is not the helpless, subject to terror, who initiate terror, but the violent, who with their power create the concrete situation which begets the 'rejects of life.' It is not the tyrannized who initiate despotism, but the tyrants. It is not those whose humanity is denied them who negate humankind, but those who denied that humanity (thus negating their own as well). Force is used not by those who have become weak under the preponderance of the strong, but by the strong who have emasculated them.”
― Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

“Can you see the pictures before you on how to intervene on behalf of the oppressed? Are you thinking of what to do to the disenfranchised of your society? Do you notice the abused of your society? Can you see the afflicted that are crying for that justice every day? What of those who are been maltreated on daily basis, do you think they need that justice? Did you see any of those who are downtrodden, would that justice help them? Anyone oppressed and suppressed around you, can you serve them justice?”
― Sunday Adelaja

“Only the oppressed can receive liberating visions in wretched places. Only those thinking emerges in the context of the struggle against injustice can see God's freedom breaking into unfree conditions and thus granting power to the powerless to fight here and now for the freedom they know to be theirs in Jesus' cross and resurrection”
― James H. Cone, God of the Oppressed

“You don't have to die to self and acknowledge Jesus as Lord of your life when you regard Him simply a desperate beggar. Now of course we are to worship Him through love for the poor and the oppressed in order to be brought low rather than filled with political pride; but, in our human defenses of casting judgment while keeping our own consciences clear, many of us, in a rather half-hearted fashion, favor this Jesus merely to manipulate and use as a weapon against our opponents. This is His sole identity to a number of those who wish not to worship Him at the end of the day.”
― Criss Jami

“The agreement binding the oppressed with their oppressors is ignorance.”
― Seun Ayilara

“My worst fear is that people will feel unheard, even if their opinions aren’t desirable. When people think of themselves as unheard, and their voices remain oppressed, they’ll speak in the only language in which all men are fluent: violence.”
― Seth Daniel Parker, The Greater Good: A Novel of Divided America

“If the oppressed would not summon the courage to bend the oppressive laws then freedom wouldn't come.”
― Seun Ayilara

“...the progressive search for demons no matter the facts or circumstances is rooted in a need to see themselves as saviors of people so “oppressed” they are unable to lift themselves up.”
― David Horowitz, Blitz Trump Will Smash the Left and Win & Dark Agenda The War to Destroy Christian America By David Horowitz 2 Books Collection Set

“Stop oppressing the poor, innocent, helpless, even all the People. the world will get better by itself, Curse will come to the end, and diseases will also disappear”
― Mohammed Zaki Ansari, "Zaki's Gift Of Love"

“Non-being, i.e., distance from society, social distance is the very heritage of the oppressed.

Which means to the oppressor that social distance is a humiliation.

It is to be something less than free, or worse, someone less than white.”
― Amanda Gorman, Call Us What We Carry

“If you support the oppressed and prevent the oppressor from being unfair, then know that God guided you.”
― Kamaran Ihsan Salih

“Do not be with the oppressor, help the oppressed and prevent the oppressor from being unfair.”
― Kamaran Ihsan Salih

“The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the 'state of emergency' in which we live is not the exception but the rule. We must attain a conception of history that is in keeping with this insight. Then we shall clearly realize that it is our task to bring about a real state of emergency, and this will improve our position in the struggle against Fascism. One reason why Fascism has a chance is that in the name of progress its opponents treat it as a historical norm. The current amazement that the things we are experiencing are 'still' possible in the twentieth century is not philosophical. This amazement is not the beginning of knowledge - unless it is knowledge that the view of history which gives rise to it is untenable.
—Walter Beniamin. "Thesis 8: A Real State of Emergency”
― Walter Benjamin

“The oppressed will do anything for the sake of ego except for freedom/liberation. It does not ask the oppressive/capitalist system the popular ego question "Do you know who I am?" Only ask that from the oppressed like it.
Freedom isn't worth its ego yet!”
― Seun Ayilara

“Be neither oppressor nor oppressed in life. If you don't act according to people's minds, you will be deprived of your rights.”
― Kamaran Ihsan Salih

“Everything on the mainstream media is what the oppressors want me to know, everything that is not there is what I should know.”
― Seun Ayilara

“Better a refugee than prisoner.”
― Abhijit Naskar, World War Human: 100 New Earthling Sonnets