Oppressive Quotes
More Oppressive Quotes
In 1990 [Mother Teresa] made a trip to Albania, then the most oppressive of the Balkan Stalinist states, and laid a wreath on the grave of the dictator Enver Hoxha as well as on the irredentist monument to "Mother Albania". She was herself of Albanian descent (born in Skopje, Macedonia), but many Albanians were shocked by her embrace of Hoxha's widow and her silence on human rights.
enver hoxha— Christopher Hitchens, Saint to the rich: There was less -- and more -- to Mother Teresa than met the eye., Salon, Sept. 5, 1997
I have always disliked being a man. The whole idea of manhood in America is pitiful, in my opinion. This version of masculinity is a little like having to wear an ill-fitting coat for one's entire life (by contrast, I imagine femininity to be an oppressive sense of nakedness).
paul theroux— "Being a Man" (1983), from Sunrise with Seamonsters: Travels and Discoveries, 1964-84 (Houghton Mifflin, 1986, ISBN 0-395-41501-2, 384 pages), p. 309
Anarchy had been here all the nineteenth century, with its sinister offspring Nihilism , and it is a simple truth that the human mind can face better the most oppressive government , the most rigid restrictions, than the awful prospect of a lawless, frontierless world . Freedom is a dangerous intoxicant and very few people can tolerate it in any quantity; it brings out the old raiding, oppressing, murderous instincts; the rage for revenge, for power , the lust for bloodshed.
— Katherine Anne Porter, in The Never-Ending Wrong (1977)
The Government of the absolute majority, instead of the Government of the people, isbut the Government of the strongest interests; and when not efficiently checked, it is the most tyrannical and oppressive that can be devised.
— 1833 Speech, US Senate,15 Feb.
We live in oppressive times.We have, as a nation, become our own thought police; but instead of calling the process by which we limit our expression of dissent and wonder 'censorship', we call it 'concern for commercial viability'.
— 1986 Writing in Restaurants,'Radio Drama'.
The Government of the absolute majority instead of the Government of the people is but the Government of the strongest interests; and when not efficiently checked, it is the most tyrannical and oppressive that can be devised.
john c. calhoun— Speech to the U.S. Senate (15 February 1833).
Whether it comes from a despotic sovereign or an elected president, from a murderous general or a beloved leader, I see power as an inhuman and hateful phenomenon... I have always looked on disobedience toward the oppressive as the only way to use the miracle of having been born.
oriana fallaci— As quoted in "The Agitator: Oriana Fallaci directs her fury toward Islam" by Margaret Talbot, in The New Yorker (5 June 2006)
Is the Church fulfilling a purely religious role when by its silence or friendly relationships it lends legitimacy to dictatorial and oppressive government?
gustavo gutierrez— Chapter Five, Crisis Of the Distinction Of Planes Model, p. 40
Even when we were still fighting in the bush against the oppressive dictatorships of Idi Amin and Milton Obote, we introduced elections for the committees of the villages under our control.
yoweri museveni— On democracy, 23 September 2003 [3]
When it shall be said in any country in the world, my poor are happy; neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want, the taxes are not oppressive; the rational world is my friend, because I am a friend of its happiness: When these things can be said, then may the country boast of its constitution and its government.
thomas paine— Part 2.7 Chapter V. Ways and means of improving the condition of Europe, interspersed with miscellaneous observations
In so far as nationalism inculcates in us a sense of national and social justice which call upon us to fight any system that is oppressive or tyrannical both in our country and the world, there I am completely with nationalism. I hate Imperialism whether British or Japanese or Burmese.
aung san— Address to a meeting of the Anglo-Burman Council at the City Hall, Rangoon (8 December, 1946)
Old forms of government finally grow so oppressive, that they must be thrown off even at the risk of reigns of terror.
Herbert Spencer— On Manners and Fashion.
Order it wrong and choice is oppressive; order it right and it’s liberating.
chris anderson— Ch. 10, p. 174
As the shores of Ithaca gradually Faded away behind him And he sailed swiftly westward Toward Iberia and the Pillars of Hercules, Far from every Achaean sea, He felt he was alive once more, Freed from the oppressive bonds Of familiar, domestic things. And his adventurous heart rejoiced Coldly, devoid of love.
constantine p. cavafy— Second Odyssey, as translated by Walter Kaiser
"This work deals with a very obvious truth: just as the oppressor, in order to oppress, needs a theory of oppressive action, so the oppressed, in order to become free, also need a theory of action." "Only in the encounter of the people with the revolutionary leaders--in their communion, in their praxis--can this theory be built."
paulo freire— Chapter 4, "Cultural Synthesis"
The oppressive weight of disaster and tragedy in our lives does not arise from a high percentage of evil among the summed total of all acts, but from the extraordinary power of exceedingly rare incidents of depravity to inflict catastrophic damage, especially in our technological age when airplanes can become powerful bombs. (An even more evil man, armed only with a longbow, could not have wreaked such havoc at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415.)
stephen jay gould— "The Good People of Halifax", p. 390 (originally appeared in The Globe and Mail, 2001-09-20)
Life is a hideous thing, and from the background behind what we know of it peer daemoniacal hints of truth which make it sometimes a thousandfold more hideous. Science, already oppressive with its shocking revelations, will perhaps be the ultimate exterminator of our human species if separate species we be for its reserve of unguessed horrors could never be borne by mortal brains if loosed upon the world.
h. p. lovecraft— "Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family" - written 1920; first published in The Wolverine, No. 9 (March 1921)
The compliments you are about to pay could only sadden me, because what you love in our dear peninsula is exactly the object of our hatreds. Indeed, you crisscross Italy only to meticulously sniff out the traces of our oppressive past, and you are happy, insanely happy, if you have the good fortune to carry home some miserable stone on which our ancestors have trodden.
filippo tommaso marinetti— Quoted in: Anthony L. Geist, Jose B. Monle-N, Modernism and Its Margins: Reinscribing Cultural Modernity from Spain and Latin America. Taylor & Francis, 1999, p. 57.
[Feminism] is alienating women from their own bodies … because they don’t understand that they have something that men want , okay? So they’re encouraged to interpret all male lust as oppressive and victimizing and negative, instead of seeing that it is up to them to husband this flame. They have a flame, and it’s enormously powerful…
camille paglia— p. 259 ("No Law in the Arena: A Pagan Theory of Sexuality")
Men have sacrificed and crippled themselves physically and emotionally to feed, house, and protect women and children. None of their pain or achievement is registered in feminist rhetoric, which portrays men as oppressive and callous exploiters.
camille paglia— Reviewing Warren Farrell's The Myth of Male Power, p. 392
Capitalism has brought about the emancipation of collective humanity with respect to nature. But this collective humanity has itself taken on with respect to the individual the oppressive function formerly exercised by nature.
Simone Weil— Gravity and Grace (1972), p. 140
If people with the very best intentions carry on prosecutions that are oppressive, the end may not always perhaps sanctify the means.
— Lord Kenyon, Williams' Case (1797), 26 How. St. Tr. 704.
The oppressive measures on pornography by the Korean government are totally insane... It is actually seen that it oppresses masculinity and that it distorts the essentials. It is all done by the Ministry of Gender Equality and women’s organizations led by Korean feminists.
— Sung Jae-gi Quoted in: "(Voice) Should pornography be censored?" The Korea Herald, 2012.12.17
The game laws are already sufficiently oppressive, and therefore ought not to be extended by implication.
Joseph Chitty— Willes, J., Jones v. Smart (1785), 1 T. R. 49; reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 99.
The move towards "demythologization," for example, is largely motivated by the wish to avoid any clash between Christianity and scientific ideas. If such a clash occurs, then science is certainly right and Christianity wrong. Pursue this investigation further and you will see that science has now become as oppressive as the ideologies it had once to fight.
— Paul Karl Feyerabend (1975) How To Defend Society Against Science
In so far as nationalism inculcates in us a sense of national and social justice which call upon us to fight any system that is oppressive or tyrannical both in our country and the world, there I am completely with nationalism. I hate Imperialism whether British or Japanese or Burmese.
— Aung San, Address to a meeting of the Anglo-Burman Council at the City Hall, Rangoon (8 December 1946)
Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This our convention understood to be the most oppressive of all kingly oppressions, and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us. ~ Abraham Lincoln
— used 15 February 2008, proposed by Jeff Q
Anarchism … The theory or doctrine that all forms of government are oppressive and undesirable and should be abolished … Rejection of all forms of coercive control and authority.
— The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth edition (2000)
The theory or doctrine that all forms of government are oppressive and undesirable and should be abolished … Rejection of all forms of coercive control and authority.
— "Anarchism", in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth edition (2000)
