654 Quotes About Oppression

Leaders who do not act dialogically, but insist on imposing their decisions, do not organize the people--they manipulate them. They do not liberate, nor are they liberated: they oppress.

Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression. In our Governments, the real power lies in the majority of the Community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from the acts of Government contrary to the sense of its constituents, but from acts in which the Government is the mere instrument of the major number of the constituents.

Looking at the past must only be a means of understanding more clearly what and who they are so that they can more wisely build the future.

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

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.

If you want a definition of what a coward is, it’s needing to push a whole class of people down so that you can walk on top of them.

We're a government that believes in everybody having the illusion of free will.

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.

Prison is a second-by-second assault on the soul, a day-to-day degradation of the self, an oppressive steel and brick umbrella that transforms seconds into hours and hours into days.