#oppress

This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. ↗

— Frederick Douglass

#oppression

If we are going to save this country, if we are going to reestablish that belief in God, it's up to us. If we don't do it, who will? ↗

— Bob Riley

#away #budding #democracies #due #half

Bigotry may be roughly defined as the anger of men who have no opinions. It is the resistance offered to definite ideas by that vague bulk of people whose ideas are indefinite to excess. Bigotry may be called the appalling frenzy of the indifferent. This frenzy of the indifferent is in truth a terrible thing; it has made all monstrous and widely pervading persecutions. In this degree it was not the people who cared who ever persecuted; the people who cared were not sufficiently numerous. It was the people who did not care who filled the world with fire and oppression. It was the hands of the indifferent that lit the faggots; it was the hands of the indifferent that turned the rack. There have come some persecutions out of the pain of a passionate certainty; but these produced, not bigotry, but fanaticism--a very different and a somewhat admirable thing. Bigotry in the main has always been the pervading omnipotence of those who do not care crushing out those who care in darkness and blood. ↗

— G.K. Chesterton

#fanaticism #ideas #moral-crusade #oppression #anger

Das war ein Vorspiel nur; dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen." (Almansor) ↗

— Heinrich Heine

#books #bücherverbrennung #freedom-of-thought #human-rights #meinungsfreiheit

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

— Clara Zetkin

#countries #exploited #interests #oppressed #same

The oppression of any people for opinion's sake has rarely had any other effect than to fix those opinions deeper, and render them more important. ↗

— Hosea Ballou

#deeper #effect #fix #had #important

Guilt is not a response to anger; it is a response to one's own actions or lack of action. If it leads to change then it can be useful, since it is then no longer guilt but the beginning of knowledge. Yet all too often, guilt is just another name for impotence, for defensiveness destructive of communication; it becomes a device to protect ignorance and the continuation of things the way they are, the ultimate protection for changelessness. ↗

— Audre Lorde

#anger #black-feminism #feminism #guilt #oppression

The ability of Americans to toss off oppressive characters is the most rewarding aspect, to me, of U.S. history. ↗

— Norman Corwin

#aspect #characters #history #me #most

I think the only choice that will enable us to hold to our vision... is one that abandons the concept of naming enemies and adopts a concept familiar to the nonviolent tradition: naming behavior that is oppressive. ↗

— Barbara Deming

#choice #concept #enable #familiar #hold

It is absolutely essential that the oppressed participate in the revolutionary process with an increasingly critical awareness of their role as subjects of the transformation. ↗

— Paulo Freire

#awareness #critical #essential #increasingly #oppressed