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.

Beauty can make a woman rich, but if she relies solely on her looks to get by, she’ll always remain under a man’s thumb.

No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority.

It should not be a surprise to find that s/m fantasy is significant in women’s sex lives. Women may be born free but they are born into a system of subordination. We are not born...

One is that if women’s sexuality in Africa wasn’t under assault, if women were able to say no, if women weren’t subject to predatory attacks by men, or predatory behavior generally, then you would have...

Within a system which denies the existence of basic human rights, fear tends to be the order of the day. Fear of imprisonment, fear of torture, fear of death, fear of losing friends, family, property...

The ignorance of the oppressed is strength for the oppressor.

The ever more sophisticated weapons piling up in the arsenals of the wealthiest and the mightiest can kill the illiterate, the ill, the poor and the hungry, but they cannot kill ignorance, illness, poverty or...

Oh! What honour for the female sex! It is perfectly obvious that God has special regard for it when all these wretched people who destroyed the whole Kingdom – now recovered and made safe by...

The core of liberation theology is profoundly “theologal” – that is, rooted in the very nature of God. You see, there’s an immediate relationship between God, oppression, liberation: God is in the poor who cry...

[Israel’s military occupation is] in gross violation of international law and has been from the outset. And that much, at least, is fully recognized, even by the United States, which has overwhelming and, as I...

The oppressors do not favor promoting the community as a whole, but rather selected leaders.

If it would destroy [a 12-year-old boy] to be called a girl, what are we then teaching him about girls?

Conquest occurred through violence, and over-expolitation and oppression necessitate continued violence, so the army is present. There would be no contradiction in that, if terror reigned everywhere in the world, but the colonizer enjoys, in...

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...

When you hear someone insulting the Jews pay attention; he is talking about you.” And I believed at the time he was universally right, meaning that I was responsible in my body and my soul...

It demands great spiritual resilience not to hate the hater whose foot is on your neck, and an even greater miracle of perception and charity not to teach your child to hate.

I suggested then that the prize was not given merely as recognition of past achievement, but also as recognition, a more profound recognition, that the nonviolent way, the American Negro’s way, was the answer to...

The means of defence agst. foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home.

In asking me to contribute a mite to the memorial to Gutenberg you give me pleasure and do me honor. The world concedes without hesitation or dispute that Gutenberg’s invention is incomparably the mightiest event...

As history has also shown, especially in the twentieth century, one of the first things an ideologue will do after achieving absolute power is kill.

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...

Formerly, many men dominated women within marriage. Now, despite a much wider acceptance of women as workers, men dominate women anonymously outside the marriage. Patriarchy has not disappeared; it has changed form. In the old...

Ignorance is the supreme oppressor and tyrant.

Notwithstanding the memories of slavery, and in the face poverty, ignorance, terrorism, and subjugation still deeply woven into their lives, the embittered past of blacks was taken onto a much higher plane of intellectual and...

The festive music died down and the granite pillars were replaced with rotted wooden beams as he continued down the alleyways. The scent of fresh flowers turned to mold, and the colorful mosiacs of honor...

So long as tyranny exists, in whatever form, man’s deepest aspiration must resist it as inevitably as man must breathe.

If you grow up in a WEIRD society, you become so well educated in the ethic of autonomy that you can detect oppression and inequality even where the apparent victims see nothing wrong.

Let me tell you about gods,” said Wiggin. “No matter how smart or strong you are, there’s always somebody smarter or stronger, and when you run into somebody who’s stronger and smarter than anybody, you...

Masculinity cannot exist without femininity. On its own, masculinity has no meaning, because it is but one half of a set of power relations. Masculinity pertains to male dominance as femininity pertains to female subordination.

As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware...

When female stories are muted, we are teaching our kids that their dignity is second class and the historical accounts of their lives [are] less relevant. This lowered value carries over when women face sexual...

People get used to anything. The less you think about your oppression, the more your tolerance for it grows. After a while, people just think oppression is the normal state of things. But to become...

The distrust of wit is the beginning of tyranny.

e have men sold to build churches, women sold to support the gospel, and babes sold to purchase Bibles for the poor heathen, all for the glory of God and the good of souls. The...

When we take your person into account, you who are a young maiden, to whom God gives the strength and power to be the champion who casts the rebels down and feeds France with the...

It would be an instructive exercise for the skeptical reader to try to frame a definition of taxation which does not also include theft. Like the robber, the State demands money at the equivalent of...

Some live for their own joy and pleasure. Some live to ease the burdens of others. Then there are those who seem to exist for pain’s sake only; that in the end the wrathful fire...

To simply think about the people, as the dominators do, without any self-giving in that thought, to fail to think with the people, is a sure way to cease being revolutionary leaders.

The world is indebted for all triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression.

All my contemporaries—hundred-and-fivers or convicts—will tell you how we livedin barely sentient fear, raisingchildren for the executioner,prison, or the torture chamber.

This kind of action is a prevalent error among oppressed peoples. It is based upon the false notion that there is only a limited and particular amount of freedom that must be divided up between...

The elephants are dancing on the graves of squeeling mice.

One would never defeat one’s circumstances by working and saving one’s pennies; one would never, by working, acquire that many pennies, and, besides, the social treatment accorded even the most successful Negroes proved that one...

We who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface hidden tension that is already alive

They oppressed us but unable to kill our spirit.

Don’t be a zombie for anyone, if your oppressor likes zombies, cinemas are not located in mars.

A good man will never harm or oppress another. A good man will share his last morsel of food with others in need, and die of hunger when he no longer has any food —...

This is the real warning of Nineteen Eighty-Four: The danger comes not from our suppressors but from our ovine willingness to be suppressed.

Don’t oppress, don’t accept to be oppressed and you will live free.