Quotes about Oppression

I've never doubted that apartheid - because it was of itself fundamentally, intrinsically evil - was going to bite the dust eventually.

A free America... means just this: individual freedom for all, rich or poor, or else this system of government we call democracy is only an expedient to enslave man to the machine and make him like it.

Let's be honest: ignoring is acting, and nothing more - acting as though the words, or actions of your oppressors don't hurt. you hear the words, you feel the insults, and you bear the blows. you can act deaf and impervious to pain, but the stabs and the arrows pierce you anyway.

We must remember that any oppression, any injustice, any hatred, is a wedge designed to attack our civilization

The essence of our struggle is that men shall be free.

The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppos

In all the relations of life and death, we are met by the color line.

What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: A day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham.

Every tone [of the songs of the slaves] was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains.

Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears.

We cannot claim to have the mind of Christ and remain insensitive to the oppression of our brothers and sisters. We cannot stay oblivious to the world's struggle for redemption, freedom, and peace. We know that the good done to the poor—the least of our brothers and sisters (Matthew 25:40)—is done to Jesus himself. We know that we must commit ourselves to concrete action on behalf of liberation. There are things to be done.

In the face of the oppressed I recognize my own face, and in the hands of the oppressor I recognize my own hands. Their flesh is my flesh, their blood is my blood, their pain is my pain, their smile is my smile.