"All oppression creates a state of war."

Beauvoir, Simone De | oppression | 2 bookmarks

"They have given us into the hand of new unhappy lords. Lords without anger and honor, who dare not carry their swords. They fight by shuffling papers; they have bright dead alien eyes; They look at our labor and laughter as a tired man looks at flies."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. | oppression | 2 bookmarks

"Nature in darkness groans and men are bound to sullen contemplation in the night: restless they turn on beds of sorrow; in their inmost brain feeling the crushing wheels, they rise, they write the bitter words of stern philosophy and knead the bread of knowledge with tears and groans."

Blake, William | oppression | 0 bookmarks

"Tyranny destroys or strengthens the individual; freedom enervates him, until he becomes no more than a puppet. Man has more chances of saving himself by hell than by paradise."

Cioran, E. M. | oppression | 0 bookmarks

"Loss of freedom seldom happens overnight. Oppression doesn't stand on the doorstep with toothbrush moustache and swastika armband -- it creeps up insidiously... step by step, and all of a sudden the unfortunate citizen realizes that it is gone."

Lane, Baron | oppression | 0 bookmarks

"You may try but you can never imagine what it is to have a man's form of genius in you, and to suffer the slavery of being a girl."

Eliot, George | oppression | 0 bookmarks

"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."

Weil, Simone | oppression | 3 bookmarks

"A handful of soldiers is always better than a mouthful of arguments."

Lichtenberg, Georg C. | oppression | 1 bookmarks

"The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed."

Biko, Steven | oppression | 3 bookmarks

"Do not be misled by the fact that you are at liberty and relatively free; that for the moment you are not under lock and key: you have simply been granted a reprieve."

Kapuscinski, Ryszard | oppression | 0 bookmarks

"Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is in an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe."

Douglass, Frederick | oppression | 3 bookmarks

"In Germany they came first for the Communist, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up."

Niemoeller, Martin | oppression | 2 bookmarks

"Among those who dislike oppression are many who like to oppress."

Bonaparte, Napoleon | oppression | 1 bookmarks

"The web of domination has become the web of Reason itself, and this society is fatally entangled in it."

Marcuse, Herbert | oppression | 0 bookmarks

"We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again."

Greene, Nathanael | oppression | 1 bookmarks

"Oppression that is clearly inexorable and invincible does not give rise to revolt but to submission."

Weil, Simone | oppression | 1 bookmarks

"Ours is the century of enforced travel of disappearances. The century of people helplessly seeing others, who were close to them, disappear over the horizon."

Berger, John | oppression | 0 bookmarks

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

Jean, General Iberico Saint | oppression | 1 bookmarks

"You know, it's not the world that was my oppressor, because what the world does to you, if the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough, you begin to do to yourself."

Baldwin, James | oppression | 0 bookmarks

"You cannot raise the standard against oppression, or leap into the breach to relieve injustice, and still keep an open mind to every disconcerting fact, or an open ear to the cold voice of doubt."

Hand, Learned | oppression | 0 bookmarks

"Learn to self-conquest, persevere thus for a time, and you will perceive very clearly the advantage which you gain from it. As soon you apply yourself to orison, you will at once feel your senses gather themselves together: they seem like bees which return to the hive and there shut themselves up to work at the making of honey. At the first call of the will, they come back more and more quickly. At last, after countless exercises, of this kind, God disposes them to a state of utter rest and of perfect contemplation."

Teresa of Avila, St. | self-conquest | 0 bookmarks

"Answered prayers cause more tears than those that remain unanswered."

Teresa of Avila, St. | prayer | 11 bookmarks

"We know only that we are living in these bodies and have a vague idea, because we have heard it, and because our faith tells us so, that we possess souls. As to what good qualities there may be in our souls, or who dwells within them, or how precious they are, those are things which seldom consider and so we trouble little about carefully preserving the soul's beauty."

Teresa of Avila, St. | beauty | 0 bookmarks

"To have courage for whatever comes in life -- everything lies in that."

Teresa of Avila, St. | courage | 5 bookmarks

"We can only learn to know ourselves and do what we can -- namely, surrender our will and fulfill God's will in us."

Teresa of Avila, St. | knowledge | 3 bookmarks

"To reach something good it is very useful to have gone astray, and thus acquire experience."

Teresa of Avila, St. | experience | 2 bookmarks

"There are more tears shed over answered prayers than over unanswered prayers."

Teresa of Avila, St. | prayer | 7 bookmarks

"Be gentle to all, and stern with yourself."

Teresa of Avila, St. | kindness | 2 bookmarks

"We bloomed in Spring. Our bodies are the leaves of God. The apparent seasons of life and death our eyes can suffer; but our souls, dear, I will just say this forthright: they are God Himself, we will never perish until He does."

Teresa of Avila, St. | death | 1 bookmarks

"It is here, my daughters, that love is to be found -- not hidden away in corners but in the midst of occasions of sin. And believe me, although we may more often fail and commit small lapses, our gain will be incomparably the greater."

Teresa of Avila, St. | love | 3 bookmarks

"O my God, what must a soul be like when it is in this state! It longs to be all one tongue with which to praise the Lord. It utters a thousand pious follies, in a continuous endeavor to please Him who thus possesses it."

Teresa of Avila, St. | ecstasy | 0 bookmarks

"Do not dismayed daughters, at the number of things which you have to consider before setting out on this divine journey, which is the royal road to heaven. By taking this road we gain such precious treasures that it is no wonder if the cost seems to us a high one. The time will come when we shall realize that all we have paid has been nothing at all by comparison with the greatness of our prizes."

Teresa of Avila, St. | possessions | 0 bookmarks

"He who cannot obey himself will be commanded. That is the nature of living creatures."

Nietzsche, Friedrich | self-control | 8 bookmarks

"But then they danced down the street like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!""

Kerouac, Jack | passion | 62 bookmarks

"He who laughs best today, will also laugh last."

Nietzsche, Friedrich | laughter | 4 bookmarks

"A real gentleman, even if he loses everything he owns, must show no emotion. Money must be so far beneath a gentleman that it is hardly worth troubling about."

Dostoevsky, Fyodor | losers and losing | 7 bookmarks

"For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity or perception to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication."

Nietzsche, Friedrich | alcohol and alcoholism | 8 bookmarks

"I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage."

Nietzsche, Friedrich | free will | 8 bookmarks

"The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything."

Nietzsche, Friedrich | men | 19 bookmarks

"You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist."

Nietzsche, Friedrich | individuality | 18 bookmarks

"It seems, in fact, as though the second half of a man's life is made up of nothing, but the habits he has accumulated during the first half."

Dostoevsky, Fyodor | habit | 2 bookmarks

"If you don't fail now and again, it's a sign you're playing it safe."

Allen, Woody | risk | 14 bookmarks

"Experience, as a desire for experience, does not come off. We must not study ourselves while having an experience."

Nietzsche, Friedrich | experience | 5 bookmarks

"Not by wrath does one kill, but by laughter."

Nietzsche, Friedrich | laughter | 7 bookmarks

"The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness."

Dostoevsky, Fyodor | happiness | 7 bookmarks

"He who has a strong enough why can bear almost any how."

Nietzsche, Friedrich | reason | 11 bookmarks

"If you like a man's laugh before you know anything of him, you may say with confidence that he is a good man."

Dostoevsky, Fyodor | laughter | 14 bookmarks