Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotations on Oppression

You cannot raise the standard against oppression, or leap into the breach to relieve injustice, and still keep an open mind to every disconcerting fact, or an open ear to the cold voice of doubt.
Learned Hand (1872–1961) American Judge, Judicial Philosopher

True enough, the country is calm. Calm as a morgue or a grave, would you not say?
Vaclav Havel (1936–2011) Czech Dramatist, Statesman

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–68) American Civil Rights Leader, Clergyman

Fishes live in the sea, as men do a-land; the great ones eat up the little ones.
William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright

The worst government is the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) American Journalist, Literary Critic

People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.
Frank Herbert (1920–86) American Science Fiction Writer

Power exercised with violence has seldom been of long duration, but temper and moderation generally produce permanence in all things.
Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (c.4 BCE–65 CE) Roman Stoic Philosopher, Statesman, Tragedian

No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority.
Joseph Addison (1672–1719) English Essayist, Poet, Playwright, Politician

Oppression makes wise men mad; but the distemper is still the madness of the wise, which is better than the sobriety of fools.
Edmund Burke (1729–97) British Philosopher, Statesman

We must remember that any oppression, any injustice, any hatred, is a wedge designed to attack our civilization.
Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) American Head of State, Lawyer

Competition is easier to accept if you realize it is not an act of oppression or abrasion – I’ve worked with my best friends in direct competition
Diane Sawyer (b.1945) American Journalist, TV Personality

It is often easier to become outraged by injustice half a world away than by oppression and discrimination half a block from home.
Carl Rowan (1925–2000) American Public Servant, Journalist, Author, Columnist

One Law for the Lion and Ox is Oppression
William Blake (1757–1827) English Poet, Painter, Printmaker

My dear fellow citizens: For forty years you have heard from my predecessors on this day different variations of the same theme: how our country flourished, how many millions of tons of steel we produced, how happy we all were, how we trusted our government, and what bright perspectives were unfolding in front of us. I assume you did not propose me for this office so that I, too, would lie to you. . . We live in a contaminated moral environment. We have fallen morally ill because we became used to saying one thing and thinking another. We have learned not to believe in anything, to ignore each other, to care only about ourselves. Notions such as love, friendship, compassion, humility, or forgiveness have lost their depth and dimensions. . . The previous regime . . . reduced man to a means of production and nature to a tool of production. Thus it attacked both their very essence and their mutual relationship. It reduced gifted and autonomous people to nuts and bolts in some monstrously huge, noisy, and stinking machine.
Vaclav Havel (1936–2011) Czech Dramatist, Statesman

The camomile, the more it is trodden on, the faster it grows.
William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright

Oppression that is clearly inexorable and invincible does not give rise to revolt but to submission.
Simone Weil (1909–1943) French Philosopher, Political Activist

A desire to resist oppression is implanted in the nature of man.
Tacitus (56–117) Roman Orator, Historian

All oppression creates a state of war; this is no exception.
Simone de Beauvoir (1908–86) French Philosopher, Writer, Feminist

Even today a crude sort of persecution is all that is required to create an honorable name for any sect, no matter how indifferent in itself.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer

Fear of serious injury alone cannot justify oppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears.
Louis Brandeis (1856–1941) American Jurist

Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.
Frederick Douglass (1817–95) American Abolitionist, Author, Editor, Diplomat, Political leader

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.
James Madison (1751–1836) American Founding Father, Statesman, President

Some men look at things the way they are and ask why? I dream of things that are not and ask why not?
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright

He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
Thomas Paine (1737–1809) American Nationalist, Author, Pamphleteer, Radical, Inventor

Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time; the need for mankind to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–68) American Civil Rights Leader, Clergyman

Ours is the century of enforced travel… of disappearances. The century of people helplessly seeing others, who were close to them, disappear over the horizon.
John Berger (1926–2017) English Art Critic, Novelist

An oppressive government is more to be feared than a tiger.
Confucius (551–479 BCE) Chinese Philosopher

They have given us into the hand of new unhappy lords. Lords without anger and honor, who dare not carry their swords. They fight by shuffling papers; they have bright dead alien eyes; They look at our labor and laughter as a tired man looks at flies.
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English Journalist, Novelist, Essayist, Poet

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 (1771–1852) American Theologian

Do not be misled by the fact that you are at liberty and relatively free; that for the moment you are not under lock and key: you have simply been granted a reprieve.
Ryszard Kapuscinski (1932–2007) Polish Journalist

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