OppressionNow dreamsAre not availableTo the dreamers,Nor songsTo the singers.In some landsDark nightAnd cold steelPrevail–But the dreamWill come back,And the songBreakIts jail.

Often we blame a region’s religion when the oppression instead may be rooted in its culture. Yet, that acknowledged, it’s also true that . . . it is often cited by the oppressors.

No oppressive order could permit the oppressed to being to question: Why?

To criticize a person for their race is manifestly irrational and ridiculous, but to criticize their religion, that is a right. That is a freedom. The freedom to criticize ideas, any ideas – even if...

If you punish them, they are your slaves and if you forgive them they are your brothers.

In this martial world dominated by men, women had little place. The Church’s teachings might underpin feudal morality, yet when it came to the practicalities of life, a ruthless pragmatism often came into play. Kings...

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.

I want to read so I can read the Koran read the signs in the street know the number of the bus I’m supposed to take when I one day leave this house.

It requires something more than personal experience to gain a philosophy or point of view from any specific event. It is the quality of our response to the event and our capacity to enter into...

Oppression is more easily endured than insult.

All we have is now, this moment. If you live in the future, you’ll miss things, right here, right now, and you’ll regret it later.

The Gelaming regarded themselves as a force for good, and in many ways they were, but they were also inexorable and their compassion could often feel like oppression.

Look, people need to conform the external reality they face daily with this subjective feeling they likewise experience constantly. To do this they have two options. First, they can achieve what passes for great things....

Being female in this world means having been robbed of the potential for human choice by men who love to hate us. One does does not make choices in freedom. Instead, one conforms in body...

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....

Serikali inayodhulumu wananchi wake ni hatari kuliko simba.

You’re under no obligation to accept my oppression, but it is strongly recommended. I’ll make you love me, even if I have to impoverish you and then imprison you. –Uncle Sam

…the stark nakedness and simplicity of the conflict with which humanity is oppressed – that of getting angry with and wishing to hurt the very person who is most loved.

The ‘Manifesto’ being our joint production, I consider myself bound to state that the fundamental proposition which forms its nucleus belongs to Marx. That proposition is: that in every historical epoch, the prevailing mode of...

Why do the rest of our people suffer from the separation of races? Why are the Shape-shifters exiled by penalty of death? What have they done? What is their crime? Are you afraid to share...

This condition in which women live is created out of, and defended by, a system of ideas represented by the world’s religions, by psychoanalysis, by pornography, by sexology, by science and medicine and the social...

Each time a person stands for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, they send a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million...

Barely. They might as well be another species. What would happen without us to keep them in check? They wouldn’t work the land. They would be at each other’s throat if we weren’t there to...

I cannot hide my anger to spare you guilt, nor hurt feelings, nor answering anger; for to do so insults and trivializes all our efforts. Guilt is not a response to anger; it is a...

It is difficult to exaggerate the adverse influence of the precepts and practices of religion upon the status and happiness of woman. Owing to the fact that upon women devolves the burden of motherhood, with...

We made love like a flag draped over the coffin of a soldier. But that soldier, he fought for that flag’s enemy—he fought for the innocent people living under the shadow of that flag.

A stab had clearly once been made at de-uglifying these public spaces by painting a corridor a jaunty yellow. This was because, it turned out, babies come here to have their brains tested and someone...

Little Maiden Encounters FearDeepest regions walked she therelittle maiden sweet and fairventured far from the pathnever a whispernever a laugh…

O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose, not only the tyranny, butthe tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression.Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia, and...

[The myth of the absolutizing of ignorance] implies the existence of someone who decrees the ignorance of someone else. The one who is doing the decreeing defines himself and the class to which he belongs...

If Saddam Hussein committed crimes such as political oppression against the Iraqi people, it should be resolved legally in a fair and just manner which doesn’t paint a sense of injustice,

You can’t hold a man down without staying down with him.

The revolution of today is the oppression of tomorrow.

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

Saying of the ProphetOppressionWhen oppression exists, even the bird dies in its nest.

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...

The worst kind of oppression is when the victims think and talk in the language of their oppressors.

From time to time our national history has been marred by forgetfulness of the Jeffersonian principle that restraint is at the heart of liberty. In 1789 the Federalists adopted Alien and Sedition Acts in a...

A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man’s mind. Who knows who might be the target of a well-read man?

If you’re going to hold someone down you’re going to have to hold on by the other end of the chain. You are confined by your own repression.

When I say that we must establish values with originate in sisterhood, I mean to say that we must not accept, even for a moment, male notions of what non-violence is. These notions have never...

Those who speak largely of the human condition are usually those most exempt from its oppressions – whether of sex, race, or servitude.

other person” plays Hell trying to make-up for it. Married, divorced or dead, the ‘other person’ can never replace what was lost so muchearlier in the life and soul of the oppressed. Forgiveness must be...

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

The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along paying heavy taxes for which they...

Nothing shows a greater contempt for individuality than the train. Modern civilization uses every possible means to develop individuality, and having done so, tries everything in its power to stamp it out. It allots a...

First oppression is made into an excuse for terrorism, and then terrorism is made into an excuse for oppression.

The bonding of women that is woman-loving, or Gyn/affection, is very different from male bonding. Male bonding has been the glue of male dominance. It has been based upon recognition of the difference men see...

Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history...

In this landI have made myself sick with silenceIn this landI have wandered, lostIn this landI hunkered down to seeWhat will become of me.In this landI held myself tightSo as not to scream.-But I did...