"Though defensive violence will always be 'a sad necessity' in the eyes of men of principle, it would be still more unfortunate if wrongdoers should dominate just men."  (St. Augustine)

"They who can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety,
deserve neither liberty nor safety."
(Ben Franklin)

"He that would make his own liberty secure,
must guard even his enemy from oppression;
for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent
that will reach to himself."
(Thomas Paine)

"Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad."
(Aldous Huxley)

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority,
it's time to pause and reflect."
(Mark Twain)

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims
may be the most oppressive.  It may be better to live under robber barons,
than under omnipotent moral busybodys.  The robber baron's cruelty
may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated;
but those who torment us for our own good, will torment us without end,
for they do so with the approval of their own conscious."
(C.S. Lewis)

"When someone steals another's clothes, we call them a thief. 
Should we not give the same name to one who could clothe the naked and does not? 
The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry;
the coat unused in your closet, belongs to the one who needs it;
the shoes rotting in your closet, belong to the one who has no shoes;
the money which you hoard up, belongs to the poor."
(Basil the Great)

"If you are neutral in situations of injustice,
you have chosen the side of the oppressor.
If an elephant has it's foot on the tail of a mouse and you say
that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality"
(Bishop Desmond Tutu)


"Two-thirds of humanity is colored, and white feminists have to make themselves
aware of that. They have to look at the conditions in which people live, and they have to talk about
power relationships. Who has the power to oppress? What is the position of colored women?
Every oppressed group has to go and define its own road to liberation.
But white feminists have to acknowledge that they form a part of economic and cultural
imperialism, that they have an ethnocentric point of view, and
they often think they have a higher intellect than other parts
of the population. How many white feminists would be willing to
accept the intellectual leadership of African women? How can
women talk about some other kind of freedom, and fail to look
at South Africa? Feminism has to deal with imperialism, with
land rights, with Maori's, with native Americans, with black
women in South Africa; if not, it is a very short-sighted
feminism without a global vision."
(Gloria Joseph, 1988)

"In the name of peace, they waged the wars.  Ain't they got no shame?"
(Nikki Giovanni, The Great Pax Whitey)

"I am an invisible man. 
No I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allen Poe:
Nor am I one of your Hollywood movie ectoplasms.
I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids
- and I might even be said to possess a mind. 
I am invisible, simply because people refuse to see me. "
(Ralph Ellison)

"Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome
nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I
hate them!" 
(Albert Einstein)

"Why of course the people don't want war... It is the leaders...who
determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the
people along...all you have to do is tell them they are being attacked
and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the
country to danger. It works the same in any country."
(Hermann Goering)

"Highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill
me....  Most of them, I have no doubt, are kindly, law-abiding men who
would never dream of committing murder in private life.  On the other
hand, if one of them succeeds in blowing me to pieces with a
well-placed bomb, he will never sleep any the worse for it."
(George Orwell)

"The first person who, having fenced off a plot of ground, took it into his
head to say 'this is mine' and found people simple enough to believe him,
was the true founder of civil society.  What crimes, wars, murders, what
miseries and horrors would the human race have been spared by someone who,
uprooting the stakes or filling in the ditch, had shouted to his
fellow men; Beware of listening to this imposter!  You are lost if you
forget that the fruits of the earth belong to all and the earth itself
to no one!"
('Discourse on the Origins and Foundations of Inequality among Men' (1755),
Jean Jacques Rousseau)



"Poor Human Nature, what horrible crimes have been committed in thy
name!  Every fool, from King to policeman, from the flathead parson
to the visionless dabbler in science, presumes to speak authoritatively
of human nature.  The greater the mental charlatan the more definite
his insistence on the wickedness and the weaknesses of human nature.
Yet how can anyone speak of it today, with every soul in a prison,
with every heart fettered, wounded, and maimed?"
(Emma Goldman)

"If I can't dance I don't want to be part of your revolution."
(Emma Goldman)

"If I had to answer the following question:  'What is slavery?'
and if in a single word I were to reply: 'it is murder', my
thought would have been understood right from the start.  I
would not need to speak for long, to demonstrate that the
power to deprive a man of thought, will, and personality, is
a power of life and death, and that to enslave a man is to
murder him.  Why then to that other question:  'What is
property?' could I not answer likewise:  'it is theft',
without the certainty of being misunderstood, though this
second proposition be but the first, transformed?
(Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, 'What Is Property?')



"A government with the policy to rob Peter to pay Paul
can be assured of the support of Paul"
(Bernard Shaw)

"I sit on a man's back, choking him, and making him carry me, and yet
assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease
his lot by any means possible, except getting off his back."
(Malatesta)

"The police and army are there to keep a brake on the people and assure
the landowners's tranquility.  But if they have guns and cannons, there's
no reason why we have to fight empty handed.  We know how to use guns
too, and can get hold of them with astuteness and courage.  (These and
other "incendiary materials" are) tools which if in the hands of the gov't
serve to hold the people in slavery, in the hands of the people will
serve to conquer freedom.  The revolution can hardly be achieved with
holy water and the litany."
(Malatesta)

"I have been in Sorrow's kitchen and licked out all the
pots. Then I have stood on the peaky mountain
wrapped in rainbows, with a harp and a sword in my
hands."
(Zora Neale Hurston)

"It is hard to apply oneself to study when there is no
money to pay for food and lodging. I almost never
explain these things when folks are asking me why I
don't do this or that."
(Zora Neale Hurston)

"You can be up to your boobies in white satin, with
gardenias in your hair and no sugar cane for miles,
but you can still be working on a plantation."
(Billie Holiday)

"A `No' uttered from deepest conviction is better
and greater than a `Yes' merely uttered to please,
or what is worse, to avoid trouble."
(Mahatma Gandhi)

"Without a Peoples Army, the people have nothing"
(Mao Tse-Tung)

"Whenever death may surprise us, let it be welcome if our battle cry has reached
even one receptive ear and another hand reaches out to take up our arms."
( Che Guevara)

"I don't have time every morning to put on makeup.
I need that time to clean my rifle."
(Henriette Mantel)

"...I was born poor -and colored- and almost all the prettiest roses
I have seen have been in rich people’s yards, not in mine.
That is why I cannot write exclusively about roses and moonlight
-for sometimes in the moonlight my brothers see a fiery cross and a circle of Klansmen’s hoods.
Sometimes in the moonlight a dark body swings from a lynching tree, but for his funeral there are no roses."
(Langston Hughes, "My Adventures as a Social Poet", Pylon/Third Quarter, (1947))



"You only have power over people as long as you don't take everything away from them. 
But when you've robbed a man of everything, he's no longer in your power, he's free again."
(Alexander Solzhenitzen)

"The person who has eaten enough, calls the one who is hungry, greedy."
(Gikuyu Proverb)

"Tame birds think of freedom. The wild ones fly."
(Unknown)

"...I must own, to the shame of my own countrymen, that I was first kidnapped and
betrayed by some of my own complexion; but if there were no buyers, there would be
no sellers."
(Ottobah Cugoano, Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evils of Slavery,(1787))



"I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,
When he beats his bars, and he would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core
The caged bird sings of freedom."
(Paul Laurence Dunbar, "Sympathy")

"To Whom It May Concern:  Keep this nigger-boy running"
(Ralph Ellison, 'Invisible Man')

"Oppression can only survive through silence."
(Carmen de Monteflores)