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1 " Ethical veganism results in a profound revolution within the individual; a complete rejection of the paradigm of oppression and violence that she has been taught from childhood to accept as the natural order. It changes her life and the lives of those with whom she shares this vision of nonviolence. Ethical veganism is anything but passive; on the contrary, it is the active refusal to cooperate with injustice "
― Gary L. Francione
2 " The lesson we are indebted to Egypt for, our future generations learned that in the face of oppression silence is never golden. "
― Aysha Taryam , The Opposite of Indifference: A Collection of Commentaries
3 " Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance. "
― Robert F. Kennedy
4 " What if we who follow Jesus worked as one unit? What if we put aside the slight doctrinal differences, the denominational/movement mentality? What if we saw it as it truly will be one day - people of every tribe, kindred, tongue and nation united in one common cause! What if we all stood as one powerful resounding force against all oppression and wickedness and for all righteousness, peace and love. What if we were a city on a hill, a light that cannot be hidden. What if....what if? "
― David Holdsworth
5 " Sadly, atheists are becoming everything they aren't supposed to be: obnoxious, oppressive, loud, pushy, smug, condescending and annoying. Since when did the definition of atheism become " an anti-religious person" ? It's one thing to say " I don't believe in God because I see no proof in God. We'll just agree to disagree" . It's another thing to make it your sworn duty to put down and berate religious people, to view them as primitive morons, to turn every conversation into a debate and to make it your mission to put forth this vision of a faith-free society fueled only by science and technology. This kind of oppression is against everything atheists stand for. Atheists believe in the freedom of choice, the choice to not be religious if one does not want to be. This does not mean being pushy or rude towards anybody else who has made their own choices to be religious. For some people, religion gives them a purpose, helps them cope with trauma and grief, gives them hope, gives them something to hold onto. So, as long as they aren't pushing their faith on others, why should atheists do the same thing to them? "
6 " Your anger against every form of insult and oppression must be out of love. "
7 " Do not waste your anger, you may just be the candidate to deliver a people from oppression or injustice. "
― , The Mountain of Ignorance
8 " If there is any society where the leaders lack the knowledge and the importance of justice, then oppression will be a common neighbor of the citizens. "
9 " Generational oppression begins when what is meant to be transferred to one offspring has been taken over by reason of oppression. "
10 " It is the people who cannot stand oppression that qualifies to fight today’s modern slavery. "
11 " If people in the position of power are not made to be accountable, then, ungodliness, injustice and oppression will continue to be the order of the day in the society. "
12 " Owing to the shape of a bell curve, the education system is geared to the mean. Unfortunately, that kind of education is virtually calculated to bore and alienate gifted minds. But instead of making exceptions where it would do the most good, the educational bureaucracy often prefers not to be bothered.In my case, for example, much of the schooling to which I was subjected was probably worse than nothing. It consisted not of real education, but of repetition and oppressive socialization (entirely superfluous given the dose of oppression I was getting away from school). Had I been left alone, preferably with access to a good library and a minimal amount of high-quality instruction, I would at least have been free to learn without useless distractions and gratuitous indoctrination. But alas, no such luck.Let’s try to break the problem down a bit. The education system […] is committed to a warm and fuzzy but scientifically counterfactual form of egalitarianism which attributes all intellectual differences to environmental factors rather than biology, implying that the so-called 'gifted' are just pampered brats who, unless their parents can afford private schooling, should atone for their undeserved good fortune by staying behind and enriching the classroom environments of less privileged students.This approach may appear admirable, but its effects on our educational and intellectual standards, and all that depends on them, have already proven to be overwhelmingly negative. This clearly betrays an ulterior motive, suggesting that it has more to do with social engineering than education. There is an obvious difference between saying that poor students have all of the human dignity and basic rights of better students, and saying that there are no inherent educationally and socially relevant differences among students. The first statement makes sense, while the second does not.The gifted population accounts for a very large part of the world’s intellectual resources. As such, they can obviously be put to better use than smoothing the ruffled feathers of average or below-average students and their parents by decorating classroom environments which prevent the gifted from learning at their natural pace. The higher we go on the scale of intellectual brilliance – and we’re not necessarily talking just about IQ – the less support is offered by the education system, yet the more likely are conceptual syntheses and grand intellectual achievements of the kind seldom produced by any group of markedly less intelligent people. In some cases, the education system is discouraging or blocking such achievements, and thus cheating humanity of their benefits. "
― Christopher Langan
13 " This was the end of the Renaissance. Culture, once beloved and fostered by the papacy, opened the way to dangerous freedom. Then - as now - knowledge, culture, intellectual curiosity became suspect, even dangerous to oppressive regimes: knowledge leading to engaging the mind into reasoning, culture into wanting to know more, intellectual curiosity sharpening the appetite for information, fact. Ignorance was considered safe and political oppression went hand in hand with the congregation of the Inquisition. "
14 " I wake up, I feel the inescapable oppression of the sunlight pouring through my bedroom window, and I am struck by the fact that I am alone. And that everyone is alone. And that everything I understood seven hours ago has already changed, and that I have to learn everything again. "
― Chuck Klosterman , Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto
15 " If enough individuals are full of despair and anger in their hearts, there will be violence in the streets. If enough individuals are full of greed and fear in their hearts, there will be racism and oppression in society. You can't remove the external social symptoms without treating the corresponding internal personal diseases...Pope Francis draws our attention to the 'invisible thread' of the market, which he describes as 'the mentality of profit at any price, with no concern for social exclusion or the destruction of nature.' This mentality generates inequality, which in turn generates 'a violence which no police, military, or intelligence resources can control'...changed individuals cross racial, religious, ethnic, class or political boundaries to build friendships. These friendship work like sutures, healing wounds in the social fabric. They 'humanize the other,' making it harder for groups to stereotype or scapegoat. They create little zones where the beloved community is manifest...They help people envision the common good--a situation where all are safe, free, and able to thrive. As my friend Shane Claiborne says, our problem isn't that rich people don't care about poor people; it's that all too often, rich people don't know any poor people. Knowing one another makes interpersonal change and reconciliation possible. (p. 167-168) "
― Brian D. McLaren , The Great Spiritual Migration: How the World's Largest Religion Is Seeking a Better Way to Be Christian
16 " Dissident Natan Sharansky writes that there are two kinds of states -- " fear societies" and " free societies," two kinds of consciousness. The consciousness derived of oppression is despairing, fatalistic, and fearful of inquiry. It is mistrustful of the self and forced to trust external authority. It is premised on a dearth of self-respect. It is cramped.In contrast, the consciousness of freedom is one of expansiveness, trust of the self, and hope. It is a consciousness of limitless inquiry. It builds up in a citizen a wealth of self-respect. "
17 " . . . in no instance has a system in regard to religion been ever established, but for the purpose, as well as with the effect of its being made an instrument of intimidation, corruption, and delusion, for the support of depredation and oppression in the hands of governments. "
― Jeremy Bentham ,
18 " This morning there s first a predictable story about Darfur; an expert on African affairs notes that seven thousand African Union troops patrolling a region the size of France have been ineffectual in preventing continued janjaweed terror. Funding for the troops is about to run out, and it seems that no one, including the United States, is ready to put forth more money or come up with new ideas to stop the killing and displacement. This is not surprising to those of us who lived through twenty years of oppression by the hands of Khartoum and its militias. "
― , What Is the What
19 " ...And there really are men who believe in this, who spend their time in promoting Leagues of Peace, in delivering addresses, and in writing books; and of course the governments sympathize with it all, pretending that they approve of it; just as they pretend to support temperance, while they actually derive the larger part of their income from intemperance; just as they pretend to maintain liberty of the constitution, when it is the absence of liberty to which they owe their power; just as they pretend to care for the improvement of the laboring classes, while on oppression of the workman rest the very foundations of the State; just as they pretend to uphold Christianity, when Christianity is subversive of every government. "
― Leo Tolstoy , The Kingdom of God Is Within You
20 " Where an open war is impossible, oppression can continue quietly behind the scenes. Terrorism. Guerrilla warfare, violence, prisons, concentration camps. I ask you: Is this peace?The true antipode of peace is violence. And those who want peace in the world should remove not only war from the world but also violence. If there is no open war but there is still violence, that is not peace. "
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn , Warning to the West