Oppression

“ With every hand raised against him in the old land and the new, in the land of his hoped-for freedom, what more logical than that his should be turned against society that seems to exist only for his oppression? ”

“ All an infernal system of oppression, like the sweating system, asks, is to be let alone. To uncover its atrocities is like turning over a huge stone in the meadow in springtime, that has been a hiding-place for bugs and worms that nest away in the dark. ”

“ Bear my contempt of oppressors.
Speak against unconscious oppression,
Speak against the tyranny of the unimaginative,
Speak against bonds.
Go to the bourgeoise who is dying of her ennuis,
Go to the women in suburbs. ”

“ Just as liberty finds itself between the two extremes of legal oppression and anarchy, so also we shall find the beautiful between two extremes, between the expression of dignity which bears witness to the domination exercised by the mind, and the voluptuous expression which reveals the domination exercised by instinct. ”

“ No hope cheered us: no noble object looming in the dim and distant future kindled our ambition. Oppression—cold, cheerless oppression, like the dreary region of an eternal winter, chilled every noble passion and fettered and paralysed every arm. ”

“ It was the era of uncontroverted despotism, which, with sacrilegious arrogance, claimed the title of divine rank; and mankind advanced slowly in progress, because it was not conscious of its own aim. Oppression was taken for a gloomy fatality. ”

“ A spot of earth almost unknown to the geography of the age, destitute of all available resources, few in numbers, we remonstrated against oppression, and, when invaded by a numerous host, we dared to proclaim our independence and to strike for freedom on the breast of the oppressor. ”

“ He comes forward therefore, while he declares himself an eternal and uncompromising enemy to all cruelty, injustice, tyranny, and oppression, not against, but for liberty—not against, but for the coloured man—not against, but for humanity. ”

“ We deplore the outrages which accompany revolutions. But the more violent the outrages, the more assured we feel that a revolution was necessary. The violence of these outrages will always be proportioned to the ferocity and ignorance of the people; and the ferocity and ignorance of the people will be proportioned to the oppression and degradation under which they have been accustomed to live. ”

“ Of all systems and institutions, the most vigorous in battling Liberty,—the most noxious in adulterating Right,—the most corrosive in eating out Nationality, has been an Aristocracy based upon habits or traditions of oppression. ”

“ We say, while we are made to hinder no man of his Priviledges given him in his Creation, equal to one, as to another; what Law then can you make, to take hold upon us, but Laws of Oppression and Tyranny, that shall enslave or spill the blood of the Innocent? ”

“ She shouted the talismanic words, 'Oppression and Liberty,' and said, 'Let us achieve our purpose or die!' The masses, blinded by falsehood, caught the spirit of the leaders, and verily believe they are struggling for freedom. ”

“ The oppressors, that is, those who take part in government, and those who profit by oppression, that is, the rich, no longer imagine, as they once did, that they are the elect of the world, and that they constitute the ideal of human happiness and greatness, to attain which was once the highest aim of the oppressed. ”

“ Oppression guards the golden promise, and servile brutality is the only earnest of success. Then like a clarion note in the desert sounds the call of the Ideal. Strong and rousing rolls the battle-cry of Revolution. ”

“ The oppression which, trembling at every nerve yet resolute to heroism, it was his ill-fortune to encounter at school and at college, led him to dissent in all things from those whose arguments were blows, whose faith appeared to engender blame and hatred. ”

“ You and the Common People have assisted each other to cast out the head of oppression, which was Kingly Power seated in one man’s hand, and that work is now done, and till that work was done you called upon the people to assist you to deliver this distressed, bleeding, dying Nation out of bondage. ”

“ Whether the oppressed and despairing bondman, no longer able to repress his deep yearnings for manhood, or the tyrant, in his pride and impatience, takes the initiative, and strikes the blow for a firmer hold and a longer lease of oppression, the result is the same,—society is instructed, or may be. ”

“ Give me leave most sincerely to express my grief that the efforts you have made for the removal of oppression in your own country and for extending the blessings of liberty and plenty to the poor should have met with so ungrateful a return of persecution and insult. ”

“ A weight of oppression seemed to dull their minds and restrict their lungs. They were like creatures that listen furtively in hidden terror to catch the forewarning of some catastrophe, the nature of which they know not. ”

“ I believe that the cruelty which now seems so common may, in some degree, be attributed to the oppression which its exercisers themselves suffer; for every one who has studied the human mind will agree with me, that, with few exceptions, the oppressed become the hardest of oppressors. ”

“ You see men marshalling armies, and making war with one another to destroy each other, and take possession of their territory and wealth. One man who is in possession of wealth, power, and authority, sees oppression exercised by kings; so he follows the example, as do rulers who exercise authority under their sovereign; then others in a still lower degree do the same; thus oppression treads upon the heels of oppression, and distress follows distress. ”

“ Political truths can be made so evident that the opinion of an instructed public will be invincible, and will banish the abuse of power. To resist oppression is to make a league with heaven, and all things are oppressive that resist the natural order of freedom. ”

“ Bad as it may be, the oppression exercised by the few strikes only those who are in some way conspicuous. The common mass, who offer no special temptation to extortion, escape comparatively unhurt, and feel little sympathy for the victim. ”

“ It is true that the artful practice and cunning instigation of the purchased friends and bribed advocates of oppression, joined to the interest which the thieves and pick-pockets of a great city always have in civil tumult and confusion, may now and then succeed in exciting the young, the ignorant, the thoughtless, and the depraved, to acts of violence in favor of tyranny. ”

“ Resistance to oppression. Fourth and last in the list of natural and imprescriptible rights, resistance to oppression — meaning, I suppose, the right to resist oppression. What is oppression? Power misapplied to the prejudice of some individual. What is it that a man has in view when he speaks of oppression? ”

“ For thirty years the sounds of war had been silent in our domain, but justice demanded that we interfere in behalf of a people who are struggling against oppression, and in the noble cause of humanity. ”

“ I do but name these as extreme instances of the way in which, under institutions that nominally secuie men from oppression, they may be intolerably oppressed—unable to utter their opinions and to conduct their private lives as they please. ”

“ They may perhaps be taught to dread any future rupture with a people grown strong by oppression, and become respectable among all nations, for their manly resistance to the tyrannous hand stretched out to enslave them. ”

“ And while their efforts to throw off oppression are not repressed by a feeling that there is no power to which they can appeal, these efforts are kept under due restraints, by a consciousness that they cannot be unwisely exerted, except to the injury of the people themselves. ”

“ The men who uttered such lines were driven from their class, their homes, and their country. They were despised and hated, like all who protest against oppression and remind the smug world of uncomfortable things. ”

“ The oppressors being less numerous than the oppressed it was necessary to perfect the science of oppression, in order to support this false equilibrium. The art of governing became the art of subjecting the many to the few. ”

“ It would be oppression to do—what the Legislature could not do if it would—prevent a man's thoughts; but if he speaks them aloud, and asks either for instruction and confutation, if he be in error, or assent and honor, if he be in the right, then it is no oppression to throw him into a dungeon! ”

“ And from the fusion of opinions and sympathies thus produced, a general sentiment is elicited, to which oppression of any kind, whether of one class by another, or of individuals by the tyranny of sectarian custom, seldom appeals in vain. ”

“ No body, in those days, imagined such an imposition to be oppressive or unjust: and if those who remain subject to it, appear under oppression at present, it is only because they continue in their antient situation. ”

“ We can well understand and appreciate how, in a country ruled by a despot, whose heel of oppression and tyranny is ever on the necks of the down-trodden people, the masses, desiring some measure of free action and equality, would revolt against these conditions, and seek a reorganization of society. ”

“ The several species of government vie with each other in the absurdity of their constitutions, and the oppression which they make their subjects endure. Take them under what form you please, they are in effect but a despotism, and they fall, both in effect and appearance too, after a very short period, into that cruel and detestable species of tyranny: which I rather call it, because we have been educated under another form, than that this is of worse consequences to mankind. ”

“ But there is only one thing which gathers people into seditious commotions, and that is oppression. ”

“ Makes cowards out of men. The human race
Has climbed on protest. Had no voice been raised
Against injustice, ignorance and lust
The Inquisition yet would serve the law
And guillotines decide our least disputes.
The few who dare must speak and speak again
To right the wrongs of many. Speech, thank God,
No vested power in this great day and land
Can gag or throttle; Press and voice may cry
Loud disapproval of existing ills,
May criticise oppression and condemn
The lawlessness of wealth-protecting laws
That let the children and child-bearers toil
To purchase ease for idle millionaires, ”

“ So revolt followed cruelty and oppression. Great excesses were committed by both parties, and most horrible barbarities were exhibited. The atrocious nature of civil war is ever the same, and presents nearly the same undeviating picture of misery and crime. ”

“ Every man’s observation may suggest to him many kinds of injustice and oppression which the rich, the insidious, or the powerful, can commit in spite of law, or perhaps by the aid of law, against the poor, the unsuspecting, and the friendless.—Many, who can silence conscience and evade law, tremble at the thoughts of their injustice being published ”

“ By Oppression's woes and pains! By your Sons in servile chains! We will drain our dearest veins, But they shall be free! Lay the proud Usurpers low! Tyrants fall in every foe! Liberty's in every blow!— Let us Do or Die! ”

“ No idea ever agitated the popular mind to whose origin calculating selfishness was more foreign. Even the great uprising which brought about the War of Independence was less free from selfish motives, for it sprang from resistance to a tyrannical abuse of the taxing power. Then the people rose against that oppression which touched their property; the anti-slavery movement originated in an impulse only moral.
It was the irresistible breaking out of a trouble of conscience,—a trouble of conscience which had already disturbed the men who made the American Republic. ”

“ Crush humanity out of shape once more, under similar hammers, and it will twist itself into the same tortured forms. Sow the same seed of rapacious license and oppression over again, and it will surely yield the same fruit according to its kind. ”

“ The people are suffering from oppression, and to deliver them from this oppression they are advised to frame general measures for the improvement of their position, which measures are to be intrusted to the authorities, and them selves to continue to yield obedience to the authorities. ”