Home > Topic > oppressive
41 " A man who under the influence of mental pain or unbearably oppressive suffering sends a bullet through his own head is called a suicide; but for those who give freedom to their pitiful, soul-debasing passions in the holy days of spring and youth there is no name in man's vocabulary. After the bullet follows the peace of the grave: ruined youth is followed by years of grief and painful recollections. He who has profaned his spring will understand the present condition of my soul. I am not yet old, or grey, but I no longer live. Psychiaters tell us that a solider, who was wounded at Waterloo, went mad, and afterwards assured everybody - and believed it himself - that he had died at Waterloo, and that what was now considered to be him was only his shadow, a reflection of the past. I am now experiencing something resembling this semi-death.. "
― Anton Chekhov , The Shooting Party
42 " Beside himself with shame and despair, the utterly ruined though perfectly just Mr. Golyadkin dashed headlong away, wherever fate might lead him; but with every step he took, with every thud of his foot on the granite of the pavement, there leapt up as though out of the earth a Mr. Golyadkin precisely the same, perfectly alike, and of a revolting depravity of heart. And all these precisely similar Golyadkins set to running after one another as soon as they appeared, and stretched in a long chain like a file of geese, hobbling after the real Mr. Golyadkin, so there was nowhere to escape from these duplicates — so that Mr. Golyadkin, who was in every way deserving of compassion, was breathless with terror; so that at last a terrible multitude of duplicates had sprung into being; so that the whole town was obstructed at last by duplicate Golyadkins, and the police officer, seeing such a breach of decorum, was obliged to seize all these duplicates by the collar and to put them into the watch-house, which happened to be beside him . . . Numb and chill with horror, our hero woke up, and numb and chill with horror felt that his waking state was hardly more cheerful . . . It was oppressive and harrowing . . . He was overcome by such anguish that it seemed as though some one were gnawing at his heart. "
― Fyodor Dostoevsky , The Double
43 " My memory of the school building itself, its rooms and lockers, blackboards, and hallways, bring on a heavy, oppressive feeling. Whether I was more unhappy in school than any of my friends I don't know. I never would have said I didn't like school, and there are moments I distinctly remember enjoying, but these truths don't alter my memory of that place. "
― Siri Hustvedt , A Plea for Eros: Essays
44 " I sit alone in a dead world. The wind blows hot and dry, and the dust gathers like particles of memory waiting to be swept away. I pray for forgetfulness, yet my memory remains strong, as does the outstretched arm of the oppressive air. It seems as if the wind has been there since the beginning of the nightmare. Sometimes loud and harsh, a thousand sharp needles scratching at my reddened skin. Sometimes a whisper, a curious sigh in the black of night, of words more frightening than pain. I know now the wind has been speaking to me. Only I couldn't understand because I was too scared. I am scared now as I write these words. Still, there is nothing else to do. "
― , Whisper of Death
45 " What I want from the church, or any faith community, I see now, is a look between human beings that says we are knitted together, standing in a circle, holding each other up, waiting for the next ax to fall, rather than persons following a crowned Jesus, believing in an oppressive creed and tinny, false hope. That " religion" is about wanting the thing to last forever and make the pain go away. The reality is, instead, more about Jesus kneeling in the dust making a paste of spit and dirt. The reality is much more raw. "
46 " These young men, in other words, represented a variety of types, but one thing they had in common was that they'd all given up on committing positively to anything in life. This was not their fault, however. The blame lay with a certain ubiquitous spirit of the times, transmitted to them by their respective mothers. And perhaps it goes without saying that this " spirit of the times" was in fact an oppressive value system based primarily upon the absolute certainty that nothing in this world was ever going to change. "
47 " Shoulds can masquerade as high standards or lofty goals, but they are not the same. Goals direct us from the inside, but shoulds are paralyzing judgments from the outside. Goals feel like authentic dreams while shoulds feel like oppressive obligations. Shoulds set up a false dichotomy between either meeting an ideal or being a failure, between perfection or settling. The tyranny of the should even pits us against our own best interests. "
― Meg Jay
48 " Life ... is a burden. The day about to begin is an oppressive weight.... The erect penis is heavy, even heavier the hanging one. Even the most tender breast has to be dragged along. "
― Jean Améry , On Suicide: A Discourse on Voluntary Death
49 " P33- Oppression is domesticating. Gravest obstacle to the achievement of liberation is that oppressive reality absorbs those within it and thereby acts to submerge human beings consciousness. "
― Paulo Freire , Pedagogy of the Oppressed
50 " Secrets, like tyrants, have influence that extends far beyond their own thrones. To silence their oppressive powers, they must be uncrowned. "
51 " It seems that the rebels found the chaos of transition more difficult to accept than the tyranny they had known before. They joyfully welcomed back authority-even oppressive authority-for it was less painful for them than uncertainty. "
― Brandon Sanderson , The Well of Ascension (Mistborn, #2)
52 " We try to show that the well-ordered society of justice as fairness is indeed possible according to our nature and those requirements. This endeavor belongs to political philosophy as reconciliation; for seeing that the conditions of a social world at least allow for that possibility affects our view of the world itself and our attitude toward it. No longer need it seem hopelessly hostile, a world in which the will to dominate and oppressive cruelties, abetted by prejudice and folly, must inevitably prevail. None of these may ease our loss, situated as we may be in a corrupt society. But we may reflect that the world is not in itself inhospitable to political justice and its good. Our social world might have been different and there is hope for those at another time and place "
― John Rawls , Justice as Fairness: A Restatement
53 " Alexa, and the other guests, and perhaps even Georgina, all understood the fleeing from war, from the kind of poverty that crushed human souls, but they would not understand the need to escape from the oppressive lethargy of choicelessness. "
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie , Americanah
54 " At its best, choice is a means by which we can resist the people and the systems that seek to exert control over us. But choice itself can become oppressive when we insist that it is equally available to all. It can become an excuse for ignoring inequities that stem from gender or class or ethnic differences, for example, because one can blithely say, “oh, but they had a choice! We all have choices. "
― Sheena Iyengar , The Art of Choosing
55 " But “nowhere” does not mean nothing; rather, region in general lies therein, and disclosedness of the world in general for essentially spatial being-in. Therefore, what is threatening cannot come closer from a definite direction within nearness, it is already “there” - and yet nowhere. It is so near that it is oppressive and takes one’s breath - and yet it is nowhere. "
― Martin Heidegger , Being and Time
56 " The Declaration of Independence says that ‘all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’Raised within the Judeo-Christian value system, we are taught from childhood ‘Do not judge others lest you be judged,’ ‘Do unto others what you want others to do unto you,’ and ‘Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.’ We in America have taken this a little further and have become deaf to evil, blind to evil, and incapable of speaking out against evil because as long as it does not affect us, it is none of our business. The Declaration of Independence says that ‘all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ We the people are entitled to equal rights under the law and should have the same opportunity to pursue our dreams, whatever those dreams may be; but it is not said anywhere that we as people are created equal in the material or societal and cultural sense by our creator. Societies and cultures are not created and do not develop equally. This harsh judgment may make you wince. It is not politically correct to say that our Western societies are better than the Muslim Arab societies, but we are, we have been, and we always will be, not because of our wealth but because of the way we think and live, and the values we hold dear and pass on to our future generations. It infuriates me to hear self-loathing Americans, who have never experienced life in an oppressive culture or under an oppressive leadership such as is found in the Middle East, badmouth and put down our culture, government, and country in general. They find all sorts of things wrong with America and think it is insulting to non-Americans to acknowledge that our Western culture is in any way better than others. They are so concerned about hurting ‘feelings,’ and nobody wants to be accused of being a holier-than-thou type. They should get out and see the world and how Arab Muslim leaders are really messing up other people’s lives and getting away with it. Just as it’s time to hold people accountable for their actions, it’s time to hold societies and cultures accountable for theirs also. It is by not judging others that you end up with evil people like bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, and suicide bombers driven by the ideology that you are worthless infidels who should be killed as Allah ordered "
― Brigitte Gabriel , Because They Hate
57 " The speed of modern life is an oppressive thing, and the corporate world is quick to punish those with an honest heart. Qualities such as ‘nice, honest, kind, happy, relaxed, sincere, innocent’ are frowned upon as weaknesses. Yet these values are the essence of a good person. Unfortunately, if you don’t keep the balance, they can be lost like sand through your fingers. "
― Fennel Hudson , Wild Carp - Fennel's Journal - No. 4
58 " We agreed that at least to some extent the whole punk movement is based on the Buddha's 1st noble truth of suffering & the dissatisfactory nature of the material world. The punks see through the lies of society & the oppressive dictates of modern consumer culture. Very few punks though seem to take it further & attempt to understand the causes & conditions of the suffering & falsehoods, unfortunately punks rarely come around to seeing that there is actually a solution & a path to personal freedom. My own life's experience w/ both Dharma practice & punk rock inspired me to try to bridge the gap between the two. I've tried to help point out the similarities, while also acknowledging the differences, & to show those of my generation who are interested that they can practice meditation & find there the freedom we have been seeking in our rebellion against the system. "
― Noah Levine , Dharma Punx: A Memoir
59 " In the imposition of a unitary and homogeneous popular culture, disseminated now throughout the world by the spread of Western technology and communications, is to be found one of the central features of modernity's distinctive way of achieving the priority of the one over the many. Homogeneity derives from the creation of an undifferentiated social or other reality...It is not therefore the priority of the many that distinguishes modernity from other cultures, but the shape the priority of the one takes in practice. Thus both the ancient and modern eras, in so far as they can be distinguished in the way often attempted, share in a tendency to elevate the one over the many: to enslave the many to the heteronomous rule of the one. The pathos of the modern condition is that, after rejecting what it rightly sees to be the oppressive forms of unity deriving from the past, it has itself succumbed to various false universals that replicate or even exacerbate the bondage from which it had hoped to free itself. "
― Colin E. Gunton , The One, the Three and the Many: God, Creation, and the Culture of Modernity
60 " Illiteracy does not impede the practice of democracy, as witnessed by the success of democracy in India despite the high illiteracy rate. One doesn't need a university diploma to realize that the ruler is oppressive and corrupt. On the other hand, to eradicate illiteracy requires that we elect a fair and efficient political regime. "
― Alaa Al Aswany , شيكاجو