#oppress

Guilt is not a response to anger; it is a response to one's own actions or lack of action. If it leads to change then it can be useful, since it is then no longer guilt but the beginning of knowledge. Yet all too often, guilt is just another name for impotence, for defensiveness destructive of communication; it becomes a device to protect ignorance and the continuation of things the way they are, the ultimate protection for changelessness. ↗

— Audre Lorde

#anger #black-feminism #feminism #guilt #oppression

The ability of Americans to toss off oppressive characters is the most rewarding aspect, to me, of U.S. history. ↗

— Norman Corwin

#aspect #characters #history #me #most

I think the only choice that will enable us to hold to our vision... is one that abandons the concept of naming enemies and adopts a concept familiar to the nonviolent tradition: naming behavior that is oppressive. ↗

— Barbara Deming

#choice #concept #enable #familiar #hold

Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who feels what is happening. Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand. ↗

— Simone Weil

#cannot #crushed #crushing #feel #feels

Individuals are prey to institutions in modern mass societies... Individuals can struggle mightily against institutionalized conditions, but without changing the institutions themselves, those efforts will be largely for naught, since people tire, lose focus, forget, and, eventually, give up their ghosts, while institutions share no such limitations. ↗

— Brian Awehali

#politics #politics-observation #power #radicalism #change

A commitment to sexual equality with men is a commitment to becoming the rich instead of the poor, the rapist instead of the raped, the murderer instead of the murdered. ↗

— Andrea Dworkin

#feminism #liberation #oppression #radical #equality

I believe that there will be ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those who do the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the system of exploitation. I believe that there will be that kind of clash, but I don't think it will be based on the color of the skin... ↗

— Malcolm X

#exploitation #freedom #justice #malcolm-x #oppression

Rebellion to tyranny is obedience to God. ↗

— Thomas Jefferson

#oppression #tyranny #freedom

You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police ... yet in their hearts there is unspoken fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts: words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home -- all the more powerful because forbidden -- terrify them. A little mouse of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic. ↗

— Winston Churchill

#dictatorship #fear #freedom #government #independent-thought

Being female in this world means having been robbed of the potential for human choice by men who love to hate us. One does does not make choices in freedom. Instead, one conforms in body type and behavior and values to become an object of male sexual desire, which requires an abandonment of a wide-ranging capacity for choice... Men too make choices. When will they choose not to despise us? ↗

— Andrea Dworkin

#feminism #freedom #men #morality #objectification