Assata Shakur
Activist
"Where there is oppression, there will be resistance."
Oppression quotes
Oppression
157 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Simone de Beauvoir
Philosopher, Writer
"All oppression creates a state of war."
Simone Weil
Philosopher, Activist
"Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who feels what is happening. Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand."
Jorge Luis Borges
Writer, Poet
"Dictatorships foster oppression, dictatorships foster servitude, dictatorships foster cruelty; more abominable is the fact that they foster idiocy."
Malcolm X
Civil Rights Activist, Minister
"I just don't believe that when people are being unjustly oppressed that they should let someone else set rules for them by which they can come out from under that oppression."
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside oppression — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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Oppression quotes (page 1 of 8)
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"But there is only one thing which gathers people into seditious commotion, and that is oppression"
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"The object of terrorism is terrorism. The object of oppression is oppression. The object of torture is torture. The object of murder is murder. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?"
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"Rebellion to tyranny is obedience to God."
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"Among those who dislike oppression are many who like to oppress."
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"No social problem is as universal as the oppression of the child"
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"Unless the mass retains sufficient control over those entrusted with the powers of their government, these will be perverted to their own oppression, and to the perpetuation of wealth and power in the individuals and their families selected for the trust."
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"There can be no really pervasive system of oppression, such as that in the United States, without the consent of the oppressed"
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"When forces of oppression come to maintain themselves in power against established law, peace is considered already broken."
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"Everybody knows there is no fineness or accuracy of suppression; if you hold down one thing, you hold down the adjoining."
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"What is surprising is not that oppression should make its appearance only after higher forms of economy have been reached, but that it should always accompany them."
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"The function of a bourgeois democracy is to secure the consent of the masses to their own exploitation and oppression."
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"A certain inequality in regard to property still exists in a socialist society. But in a socialist society there is no unemployment, no exploitation, no oppression of nationalities."
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"Being a warrior and being a struggler has been forced on me by oppression, otherwise I would have been free to be so much more."
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"Oppression tries to defend itself by its utility."
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"When a system of oppression has become institutionaliz ed it is unnecessary for individuals to be oppressive"
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"Christian ideology has contributed no little to the oppression of woman."
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"Hitherto, every form of society has been based ... on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes."
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"To oppression, plundering and abandonment, we respond with life."
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"Freedom has nothing to do with having the right to vote for your oppressor; freedom is not having any form of oppression."
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"Patience is one of those feminine qualities which have their origin in our oppression but should be preserved after our liberation."
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