#oppression

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

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

#oppression #politics #power #freedom

It is impossible to enslave, mentally or socially, a bible-reading people. The principles of the bible are the groundwork of human freedom. ↗

— Horace Greeley

#freedom #god #law #liberty #oppression

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

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

A habitual disuse of physical forces totally destroys the moral; and men lose at once the power of protecting themselves, and of discerning the cause of their oppression. ↗

— Joel Barlow

#destroys #discerning #disuse #forces #habitual

Fascism is fascism. Terrorism is terrorism. Oppression is oppression. ↗

— Harry Belafonte

#oppression #terrorism

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

BLOODY LIPS The bloody wound Of the gladiator Gurgles out life's end. The cries of acclimations from the stands Fill the sky with raging tigers. Waving their arms about to incite the masses The aging notables add an air of dignity to the arena. Making their separate entries they K N E E L over the still-warm corpses Of the young. Their withered lips they pose Upon the fresh flowing wounds And, to prolong their lives – so they believe, Suck, ravenously suck out the blood, blood, blood. Fresh blood from the sun Flowing into filthy veins As into sewage pipes, And thus the Heart of the Nation is abandoned. ↗

— Visar Zhiti

#bloodsport #gladiators #oppression #tyranny #vampire

The severest trial of oppression is the constant outrage which one suffers at the thought of the oppressor. What Jesus discovered was how to avoid the inner devastations. His technique was to practice the opposite emotion... [a man] may not get his freedom or possessions back, but he's less miserable. It's a difficult lesson. ↗

— B.F. Skinner

#oppression #freedom