We have to remind ourselves constantly that we are not saviours. We are simply a tiny sign, among thousands of others, that love is possible, that the world is not condemned to a struggle between oppressors and oppressed, that class and racial warfare is not inevitable.

Until you‘re prepared to kill your parents, you’re not really prepared to change the country because our parents are our first oppressors.

The non-violent technique does not depend for its success on the goodwill of the oppressor, but rather on the unfailing assistance of God.

Take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.

Cats are oppressed, dogs terrify them, landladies starve them, boys stone them, everybody speaks of them with contempt. If they were human beings we could talk of their oppressors with a studied violence, add our strength to theirs, even organize the oppressed and like good politicians sell our charity for power.

Oppressed people are treacherous for the simple reason that treachery is both a means of survival and a way to curry favor with one’s oppressor.

The ignorance of the oppressed is strength for the oppressor.

All oppression creates a state of war.

But nonviolence was never for the oppressor; it was for the oppressed.

Atonement is a journey of healing that moves from the pain between a victim and an oppressor, through forgiveness, the making of amends, the relief of anger and compassion for the victim, to deep reconciliation.

Oppressors in front of the Lord, truth be told shall inherit oppression, while others receive gold.

Two children of same cruel parent look at one another and see in each other the image of the cruel parent or the image of their past oppressor. This is very much the case between Jew and Arab: It’s a conflict between two victims.

If the mind, that rules the body, ever so far forgets itself as to trample on its slave, the slave is never generous enough to forgive the injury, but will rise and smite the oppressor.

It’s our own small voice within that is our oppressor; it says we are not worthy and not powerful enough. Our limited beliefs are the real foes we need to fight and conquer.

What hurts the victim most is not the cruelty of the oppressor, but the silence of the bystander.

My great lesson from Auschwitz is: whoever wants to dehumanize any other must first be dehumanized himself.
The oppressors are no longer really human, whatever uniform they wear.

To accept injustice or segregation passively is to say to the oppressor that his actions are morally right.

The establishment of Zionist regime was a move by the world oppressor against the Islamic world.

And the people next door oppress me all night long. I tell them, I work all day, a man‘s got to have some time to learn to play the tuba. That’s oppression, that is. If I’m not under the heel of the oppressor, I don’t know who is.

Evil is a matter of choice. Those people who have been victimized and refuse to imitate their oppressors are in my mind the greatest heroes we have.

Tout reВ  volutionnaire finit en oppresseur ou en heВ  reВ  tique. Every revolutionary ends as an oppressor or a heretic.

The world is indebted for all triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression.

Dictators and oppressors should continue to fear me because I will be here for a long time.

God is an oppressor, He is incapable of human sympathy; behind a smiling face He hides an evil heart.

We are extricating ourselves from a system that insulted our common humanity by dividing us from one another on the basis of race and setting us against each other as oppressed and oppressor. That system committed a crime against humanity.

Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor.

To pardon the oppressor is to deal harshly with the oppressed.

Let us have an education, that shall practically develop our thinking faculties and manhood; and then, and only then, shall we be able to vie with our oppressors, go where we may . . .

Freedom has nothing to do with having the right to vote for your oppressor; freedom is not having any form of oppression.

Man has the right to deal with his oppressors by devouring their palpitating hearts.

As people get more desperate, history suggests that they’re not going to rise in a mighty proletarian tidal wave and wash away their oppressors. They’re gonna turn on each other.

Who but shall learn that freedom is the prize Man still is bound to rescue or maintain; That nature‘s God commands the slave to rise, And on the oppressor’s head to break the chain. Roll, years of promise, rapidly roll round, Till not a slave shall on this earth by found.

Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor; the enemy of the people. It will keep you insane your whole life.

Oppressors can tyrannize only when they achieve a standing army, an enslaved press, and a disarmed populace.

Who are the oppressors? The few: the King, the capitalist, and a handful of other overseers and superintendents. Who are the oppressed? The many: the nations of the earth; the valuable personages; the workers; they that make the bread that the soft-handed and idle eat.

The behavior and reactions of the oppressed, which lead the oppressor to practice cultural invasion, should evoke from the revolutionary a different theory of action. What distinguishes revolutionary leaders from the dominant elite is not only their objectives, but their procedures.

An educator in a system of oppression is either a revolutionary or an oppressor.

I go where there are no slaves, hangmen or oppressors; where faith does not kill; where the one who reigns is God.

The rights of no oppressed people have ever yet been obtained by a voluntary act of justice on the part of the oppressors.

To punish the oppressors of humanity is clemency; to forgive them is cruelty.

But a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the Jewish religion, before his principles were departed from by those who professed to be his special servants, and perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind, and aggrandizing their oppressors in Church and State.

The most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.

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

Feminism, unlike almost every other social movement, is not a struggle against a distinct oppressor – it’s not the ruling class or the occupiers or the colonizers – it’s against a deeply held set of beliefs and assumptions that we women, far too often, hold ourselves.

The oppressed want at any cost to resemble the oppressors.” “They call themselves ignorant and say the ‘professor‘ is the one who has knowledge and to whom they should listen.” “Almost never do they realize that they, too, ‘know things‘ they have learned in their relations with the world.

Action must be taken at once; there is no time to be lost; we shall yet see the oppressors’ yoke broken and the fragments scattered on the ground.

Very few men imprisoned for economic crimes or even crimes of passion against the oppressor feel that they are really guilty.

It is said that this is a man’s world, and sometimes, it is. For every casket girl that was saved, countless others were not. But women are more resilient than given credit for. And some women, well, let’s just say their oppressors had better watch out. I, too, am resilient, and I’m tired of being oppressed.

White women and black men have it both ways. They can act as oppressor or … and oppression of others.

The method of nonviolence seeks not to humiliate and not to defeat the oppressor, but it seeks to win his friendship and his understanding. And thereby and therefore the aftermath of this method is reconciliation.

Contemporary feminism cut itself off from history and bankrupted itself when it spun its puerile, paranoid fantasy of male oppressors and female sex-object victims. Woman is the dominant sex.

Beware of the words “internal security,” for they are the eternal cry of the oppressor.

Certain members of the oppressor class join the oppressed in their struggle for liberation.

Let Southern oppressors tremble-let their secret abettors tremble-let their Northern apologists tremble-let all the enemies of the persecuted blacks tremble.

Oppression that is clearly inexorable and invincible does not give rise to revolt but to submission.

Forgiveness is commendable, but apply not ointment to the wound of an oppressor.

We have to stop arresting prostitutes and not arresting traffickers and pimps. It’s absurd. We’re arresting the victim or the survivor and not the oppressor.

Anyone who recognizes this regime [Israel] because of the pressure of the World oppressor, or because of naivetГ© or selfishness, will be eternally disgraced and will burn in the fury of the Islamic nations.

[We need] someone bold, to put himself at the head of the disaffected and rally them against the oppressor. Some great character who could captivate the people… someone wise who could direct the actions of an unbridled and floating multitude.

Common tyrants, and public oppressors, are not intitled to obedience from their subjects, by virtue of any thing here laid down by the inspired apostle.

I knew as well as I knew anything that the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed.

But I was not obeying the first and greatest commandment – to love God first – nor is it clear that I was obeying the second – to love my neighbour. Hating the oppressors of my neighbour isn’t perhaps quite what Christ had in mind.

We’re coming with a mighty force to end the reign of your oppressors. We are coming to bring you food and medicine and a better life. And we are coming and we will not stop, we will not relent until your country is free.

It was during those long and lonely years that my hunger for the freedom of my own people became a hunger for the freedom of all people, white and black. I knew as well as I knew anything that the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed.

It is only the oppressed who, by freeing themselves, can free their oppressors.

A freedom fighter learns the hard way that it is the oppressor who defines the nature of the struggle,and the oppressed is often left no recourse but to use methods that mirror those of the oppressor.At a point, one can only fight fire with fire

Our parents are our first oppressors.

If given a choice, I would have certainly selected to be what I am: one of the oppressed instead of one of the oppressors.

God does not always punish a nation by sending it adversity. More often He gives the oppressors their hearts’ desire, and sends leanness withal into their soul.

Moral power is always more dangerous to an oppressor than political force.

I realize now how lucky I was, in the total absence of role models, to have only men to rebel against. Today‘s women students are meeting their oppressors in dangerously seductive new form, as successful congenial female professors who view themselves as victims of a rigid foreign ideology.

To hold a people in oppression you have to convince them first that they are supposed to be oppressed.

Each and every one of us has the capacity to be an oppressor. I want to encourage each and everyone of us to interrogate how we might be an oppressor and how we might be able to become liberators for ourselves and for each other.

No sincere desire of doing good need make an enemy of a single human being; that philanthropy has surely a flaw in it which cannot sympathize with the oppressor equally as with the oppressed.

Justice remains the tool of a few powerful interests; legal interpretations will continue to be made to suit the convenience of the oppressor powers.

Maine should be pleased that its animal is not a waverer, and rather than fight, lets the primed quill fall. Shallow oppressor, intruder, insister, you have found a resister.

Never befriend the oppressed unless you are prepared to take on the oppressor.

It is startling to see how the oppressed almost invariably shape themselves in the image of their hated oppressors.

For the only great men among the unfree and the oppressed are those who struggle to destroy the oppressor.

Since mankind’s dawn, a handful of oppressors have accepted the responsibility over our lives that we should have accepted for ourselves. By doing so, they took our power. By doing nothing, we gave it away. We’ve seen where their way leads, through camps and wars, towards the slaughterhouse.

The oppressed find in the oppressors their model of ‘manhood.’

You are persecuted and despised. It were better that a person should be the oppressed than that he should be the oppressor; and fitter that he should be a victim to the frailty of human instincts than that he should be powerful and crush the flowers of life and disfigure the beauties of feeling with his desire.

The Negro cannot win the respect of his oppressor by acquiescing; he merely increases the oppressor’s arrogance and contempt.

A desire to resist oppression is implanted in the nature of man.

If you advise someone on the condition that they have to accept it, then you are an oppressor.

When I walked out of prison, that was my mission, to liberate the oppressed and the oppressor both.

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

The people have now come to realize that the only way to deal with the oppressor is to deal on our own terms and this was done.

The oppressors do not perceive their monopoly on having more as a privilege which dehumanizes others and themselves. They cannot see that, in the egoistic pursuit of having as a possessing class, they suffocate in their own possessions and no longer are; they merely have.

Our task is not to liberate the oppressed, but to liberate the oppressors

You are either on the side of the oppressed or on the side of the oppressor. You can’t be neutral.

I belonged to a small minority of boys who were lacking in physical strength and athletic prowess. … We found our refuge in science. … We learned that science is a revenge of victims against oppressors, that science is a territory of freedom and friendship in the midst of tyranny and hatred.

I am not truly free if I am taking away someone else‘s freedom, just as surely as I am not free when my freedom is taken from me. The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity.

Be persecuted, rather than be a persecutor. Be crucified, rather than be a crucifier. Be treated unjustly, rather than treat anyone unjustly. Be oppressed, rather than be an oppressor. Be gentle rather than zealous. Lay hold of goodness, rather than justice.

In order for this struggle to have meaning, the oppressed must not, in seeking to regain their humanity (which is a way to create it), become in turn oppressors of the oppressors, but rather restorers of the humanity of both

Matter of internal security – the age-old cry of the oppressor. Picard

Silence is consent. And silence where life and liberty is at stake, where by a timely protest we could stay the destoyer’s hand, and do not do so, is as criminal as giving actual aid to the oppressor, for it answers his purpose.

But for the use of physical punishment by, and fear of their oppressors, animals would never be a part of a circus.

hatred of oppression seems to me so blended with hatred of the oppressor that I cannot separate them. I feel that no other injury could be so hard to bear, so very very hard to forgive, as that inflicted by cruel oppression and prejudice.

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.

Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life Besides, perfectionism will ruin your writing, blocking inventiveness and playfulness and life force (these are words we are allowed to use in California).

Had courage, wisdom, and reason always prevailed in people, there would not have been oppressions and oppressors.

We shall never secure emancipation from the tyranny of the white oppressor until we have achieved it in our own souls.

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.

The nonviolent approach does not immediately change the heart of the oppressor. It first does something to the hearts and souls of those committed to it. It gives them new self-respect; it calls up resources of strength and courage they did not know they had.

The grave unites; where e’en the great find rest, And blended lie th’ oppressor and th’ oppressed!

In order to have the continued opportunity to express their “generosity” the oppressors must perpetuate injustice as well.

REVOLUTIONARY: An oppressed person waiting for the opportunity to become an oppressor.

Dehumanization, although a concrete historical fact, is not a given destiny but the result of an unjust order that engenders violence in the oppressors, which in turn dehumanizes the oppressed

I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

Revolution is born as a social entity within the oppressor society.

The Catholics had been in the position of oppressors, and the Protestants of the oppressed

I pray for all of us, oppressor and friend, that together we succeed in building a better world through human understanding and love, and that in doing so we may reduce the pain and suffering of all sentient beings.

You know, it’s not the world that was my oppressor, because what the world does to you, if the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough, you begin to do to yourself.

Let us learn from the English rulers the simple fact that the oppressors are blind to the enormity of their own misdeeds.

The former oppressors do not feel liberated. On the contrary, they genuinely consider themselves to be oppressed.

Democracy alone can supply the vitalizing force to stir the peoples of the world into triumphant action, not only against their human oppressors, but also against their ancient enemies-hunger, misery, and despair.

Rarely has a people paid the lavish compliment and taken the subtle revenge of turning its oppressor’s speech into sorcery.

Come, all ye lovers of liberty, break the oppressor’s rod, loose the iron grasp of mobocracy, and bring to condign punishment all those who trample under foot the glorious Constitution and the people’s rights.

God wants to set the oppressed free from being oppressed and the oppressors free from oppressing.

No pedagogy which is truly liberating can remain distant from the oppressed by treating them as unfortunates and by presenting for their emulation models from among the oppressors. The oppressed must be their own example in the struggle for their redemption (Freire, 1970, p. 54).