Oppression can only survive through silence.

Oppression can only survive through silence.

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will read more

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.

You can't hold a man down without staying down with him.

You can't hold a man down without staying down with him.

Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day; but a series of oppressions, begun read more

Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate, systematic plan of reducing [a people] to slavery.

Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who read more

Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who feels what is happening. Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand.

No other offense has ever been visited with such severe penalties as seeking to help the oppressed.

No other offense has ever been visited with such severe penalties as seeking to help the oppressed.

We should feel sorrow, but not sink under its oppression.

We should feel sorrow, but not sink under its oppression.

[Bigotry's] birthplace is the sinister back room of the mind where plots and schemes are hatched for the persecution and read more

[Bigotry's] birthplace is the sinister back room of the mind where plots and schemes are hatched for the persecution and oppression of other human beings.

First we kill all the subversives; then, their collaborators; later, those who sympathize with them; afterward, those who remain indifferent; read more

First we kill all the subversives; then, their collaborators; later, those who sympathize with them; afterward, those who remain indifferent; and finally, the undecided.