Marginalization Quotes

“Why some people feel more comfortable in the “margin” of society, may simply be that it imparts them more breathing space, shores up their identity, embodies a gateway to self-determination, and confers them a sense of sovereignty, allowing more time for stressless apprehension and thoughtful reflection. (“If he doesn't play ball » )”
― Erik Pevernagie

“You don’t have to be afraid—"
"I am always afraid!"
I don’t know what shocks me more—the power in my voice or the words themselves.
Afraid.
I am always afraid.
It’s a truth I locked away years ago, a fact I fought hard to overcome.”
― Tomi Adeyemi, Children of Blood and Bone

“Geniuses are always marginalized to one degree or another. Someone wholly invested in the status quo is unlikely to disrupt it.”
― Eric Weiner, The Geography of Genius: A Search for the World's Most Creative Places from Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley

“We all know that there are language forms that are considered impolite and out of order, no matter what truths these languages might be carrying. If you talk with a harsh, urbanized accent and you use too many profanities, that will often get you barred from many arenas, no matter what you’re trying to say. On the other hand, polite, formal language is allowed almost anywhere even when all it is communicating is hatred and violence. Power always privileges its own discourse while marginalizing those who would challenge it or that are the victims of its power.”
― Junot Díaz

“I am a writer who happens to love women. I am not a lesbian who happens to write.”
― Jeanette Winterson

“And what is an authentic madman? It is a man who preferred to become mad, in the socially accepted sense of the word, rather than forfeit a certain superior idea of human honor. So society has strangled in its asylums all those it wanted to get rid of or protect itself from, because they refused to become its accomplices in certain great nastinesses. For a madman is also a man whom society did not want to hear and whom it wanted to prevent from uttering certain intolerable truths.”
― Artaud, Antonin

“The worst thing possible is to feel fully valued by others, and particularly – as I would put it – to be considered of standard value. It means we become literalized, and we come to a halt in the development that a lack of full appreciation prompts us to strive towards. When a person recognizes that he has become perfect and fulfilled, he should kill himself.”
― Olga Tokarczuk, The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story

“The problem arises, as [Adrienne] Asch observed, when "a single trait stands in for the whole, the trait obliterates the whole." Disabled people, like African Americans or any other marginalized group, are dehumanized and oppressed by being reduced to a single, devalued trait; the path to justice must be driven by the rehabilitation of that characteristic.”
― Andrew Leland, The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight

“It’s not easy growing up knowing you’re different from everyone else. But it’s even harder when those differences make people want to hurt you.”
― Aaron Fricke, Reflections of a Rock Lobster: A Story About Growing Up Gay

“I wanted to be happy. I wanted to be free to love who I loved without fear.”
― Aaron Fricke, Reflections of a Rock Lobster: A Story About Growing Up Gay

“Only in the face of each other's irreducible differences can we hope to create societies that transcend their own profoundest marginalization.”
― John Wall, Ethics in Light of Childhood

“Advocating for 2SLGBTQIA+ folks- for any marginalized group- is about affirming the full dignity and humanity of every person, without requiring us to reshape who we are to fit into the expectations of others. Yet, there’s often a subtle (or not-so-subtle) pressure to adjust or tone down parts of our identities so that those in the majority—often cisgender, heterosexual folks—feel more comfortable engaging with our message.

Here's the tension: on the one hand, we want to be effective advocates, building bridges and finding common ground; on the other, the expectation that we should compromise or simplify parts of who we are to be more palatable can erase the very unique humanity we are advocating for. When identity is compromised with conditional acceptance, it reinforces the idea that who we are is something optional or negotiable.
Imagine if you were asked to hide or downplay essential aspects of your own identity just to be heard. It’s not just uncomfortable—it sends a message that your full self is unwelcome.”
― Jamie Arpin-Ricci

“People have their fictions and believe what they have mutually agreed upon. But you know, it's not necessarily true that things are only like this or that... I urge you to create your own fiction, one that says it's you who's perfect, for instance.”
― Olga Takarczuk

“The worst thing possible is to feel fully valued by others, and particularly – as I would put it – to be considered of standard value. It means we become literalized, and we come to a halt in the development that a lack of full appreciation prompts us to strive towards. When a person recognizes that he has become perfect and fulfilled, he should kill himself.”
― Olga Takarczuk

“People have their fictions and believe what they have mutually agreed upon. But you know, it's not necessarily true that things are only like this or that... I urge you to create your own fiction, one that says it's you who's perfect, for instance.”
― Olga Tokarczuk, The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story

“Один зі способів зрозуміти нещодавню історію — уявити собі чергу по каву: уранці ви йдете до «Старбаксу», відчайдушно потребуючи чашки звичайної кави, перш ніж почнете класти цеглу, а тим часом молода особа в костюмі для йоги від Lulu Lemon влізає перед вами без черги і замовляє лате без піни зі знежиреним мигдалевим молоком — на двадцять осіб. Потім ця людина, яка влізла без черги, обертається до вас і починає читати вам лекцію про те, який ви сексист, агресивний «расист, котрому, перш ніж висловлюватися, варто згадати про свої привілеї.”
― Adrian Wooldridge, The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World

“The fight for historical truth is always a fight for present dignity.”
― Adeel Ahmed Khan

“A strong majority builds. A weak majority blames. A failing majority, drowning in its own inadequacy, turns to oppression—clinging to cruelty as a substitute for achievement, feeding on the suffering of its minorities to mask its own decay.”
― Adeel Ahmed Khan

“When injustice becomes predictable, it stops looking like injustice and starts feeling like weather.”
― Adeel Ahmed Khan

“The most dangerous injustice is the one that flatters the educated while erasing the vulnerable.”
― Adeel Ahmed Khan

“The President, however, did instruct the Secretary of Health and Human Services, RFK Jr., to determine whether NPR and PBS are complying with the statutory mandate that no person shall be subjected to discrimination in employment on the grounds of race, color, religion, national origin or sex. All this based on the idea that our nation, now firmly under the leadership of white Christian men, must safeguard, at all costs, the marginalized, disfavored voices of white Christian men.

All others, excluding Trump allies, have risen to power through an unjust system.”
― Brooke Gladstone

“Hope must be tethered to accountability, shaped by memory, and measured not by the language of the powerful but by the lived reality of the marginalized.”
― Jamie Arpin-Ricci

“If you must wave, wave the flag of those
who are stripped of their life and dignity.
Wave the rainbow, wave the watermelon -
lift up those thrown in manufactured obscurity.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Neurosonnets: The Naskar Art of Neuroscience

“I never play the victim card, because to play the victim one would have to feel inferior somehow - which I don't - I am not inferior to anyone, quite the contrary, I am one of the most spectacular specimens of whole human that ever walked the earth - which is why, whenever I face derogatory remarks, my immediate response is not that of an offended minority, but that of a concerned parent disappointed at their child's misdemeanor.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Iftar-e Insaniyat: The First Supper

“Minority is not a statistic but a relationship to power. It is felt in the constant tax of translating yourself into formats that grant provisional humanity.”
― Adeel Ahmed Khan

“To be a minority is not only to live on the margins. It is to remind the center that the narrative is incomplete.”
― Adeel Ahmed Khan

“Once a community has been identified as the remainder minority in the nation’s foundational myth, it is futile to expect the state to undo that designation. The state always requires a remainder — someone to complete its story of belonging by embodying exclusion. And it takes immense institutional effort to construct, legitimize, and stabilize that category. Once achieved, it is rarely relinquished. Even if governments change, the structure remains: the new regime will continue to press the same community deeper into the remainder mould — unless it discovers another group that can inhabit that role more conveniently, more profitably, and with less resistance. The myth must always have its remainder; without it, the nation would lose its border, its coherence, and its illusion of purity.”
― Adeel Ahmed Khan

“Our social skills are currently inadequate to the pluralistic societies we are living in. In my job as a journalist, I often find myself interviewing people who tell me they feel invisible and disrespected: Black people feeling that the systemic inequities that affect their daily experiences are not understood by whites, rural people feeling they are not seen by coastal elites, people across political divides staring at each other with angry incomprehension, depressed young people feeling misunderstood by their parents and everyone else, privileged people blithely unaware of all the people around them cleaning their houses and serving their needs, husbands and wives in broken marriages who realize that the person who should know them best actually has no clue. Many of our big national problems arise from the fraying of our social fabric. If we want to begin repairing the big national ruptures, we have to learn to do the small things well.”
― David Brooks, How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen

“As soon as somebody starts talking about times when they felt excluded, betrayed, or wronged, stop and listen. When somebody is talking to you about pain in their life, even in those cases when you may think their pain is performative or exaggerated, it’s best not to try to yank the conversations back to your frame. Your first job is to stay within the other person’s standpoint to more fully understand how the world looks to them. Your next job is to encourage them to go into more depth about what they have just said. “I want to understand your point of view as much as possible. What am I missing here?” Curiosity is the ability to explore something even in stressful and difficult circumstances.

Remember that the person who is lower in any power structure than you are has a greater awareness of the situation than you do. A servant knows more about his master than the master knows about the servant. Someone who is being sat on knows a lot about the sitter—the way he shifts his weight and moves—whereas the sitter may not be aware that the sat-on person is even there.”
― David Brooks, How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen

“Before the human race becomes equal, first the dehumanized must reign supreme.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Nazmahal: Palace of Grace