Quotes about Oppression

There is a special grief felt by the children and grandchildren of those who were forbidden to read, forbidden to question or to know.

The defeat that had frightened her in the faces of black men was the defeat of black forever defined by white.

I thought black people superior people. Not simply superior to white people, because even without thinking about it much, I assumed almost everyone was superior to them; but to everyone. Only white people, after all, would blow up a Sunday school class and grin for television over their victory, i.e. , the death of four small black girls.

She say, Miss Celie, You better hush. God might hear you. Let 'im hear me, I say. If he ever listened to poor colored women the world would be a different place, I can tell you.

Wives is like children. You have to let 'em know who got the upper hand. Nothing can do that better than a good sound beating.

The brilliance of enslaving the spirit is that it is an invisible prison from which the inmate appears to derive some comfort.

it is the sense that something that was alive for a very long time is still alive. Not yet beaten into submission or oblivion by those who kill everything they touch with money.

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

Humiliation and mental oppression by ignorant and selfish teachers wreak havoc in the youthful mind that can never be undone and often exert a baleful influence in later life.

There was no freedom in life, and certainly there was none in death.

Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.

Bad law is the worst sort of tyranny.