"If tyranny and oppression come to this land it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy."
— James Madison

"Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. 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

"The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them."
— Karl Marx

"Voldemort himself created his worst enemy, just as tyrants everywhere do! Have you any idea how much tyrants fear the people they oppress? All of them realize that, one day, amongst their many victims, there is sure to be one who rises against them and strikes back!"
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince)

"(...) when a man is denied the right to live the life he believes in, he has no choice but to become an outlaw."
— Nelson Mandela (Long Walk to Freedom: Autobiography of Nelson Mandela)

"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. The bamboozle has captured us. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back."
— Carl Sagan

"Leaders who do not act dialogically, but insist on imposing their decisions, do not organize the people--they manipulate them. They do not liberate, nor are they liberated: they oppress."
— Paulo Freire (Pedagogy of the Oppressed)

"It is impossible to enslave, mentally or socially, a bible-reading people. The principles of the bible are the groundwork of human freedom."
— Horace Greeley

"Slaves are generally expected to sing as well as to work."
— Frederick Douglass

"Looking at the past must only be a means of understanding more clearly what and who they are so that they can more wisely build the future."
— Paulo Freire (Pedagogy of the Oppressed)

"We first crush people to the earth, and then claim the right of trampling on them forever, because they are prostrate.
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— Lydia Maria Child

"The oppressors do not favor promoting the community as a whole, but rather selected leaders."
— Paulo Freire (Pedagogy of the Oppressed)

"To simply think about the people, as the dominators do, without any self-giving in that thought, to fail to think with the people, is a sure way to cease being revolutionary leaders. "
— Paulo Freire (Pedagogy of the Oppressed)

"The object of terrorism is terrorism. The object of oppression is oppression. The object of torture is torture. The object of murder is murder. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?"
— George Orwell (1984)

"The truth is that every intelligent man, as you know, dreams of being a gangster and of ruling over society by force alone. As it is not so easy as the detective novels might lead one to believe, one generally relies on politics and joins the cruelest party.What does it matter, after all, if by humiliating one's mind one succeeds in dominating every one? I discovered in myself sweet dreams of oppression."
— Albert Camus (The Fall)

"The elephants are dancing on the graves of squeeling mice."
— Cream

""Few will have the greatness to bend history; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation...It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is thus shaped. 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.""
— Senator Robert Kennedy

"And the truth must finally lie in that which every oppressed individual feels within himself but hasn't the courage to express"
— Wilhelm Reich (Beyond Psychology: Letters and Journals 1934-1939)