The worst government is often the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
H. L. Mencken

There is no doubt that Iraqis, like Australians and Americans, love and desire freedom. However, if freedom doesn't mean the right to complete self-determination, unfettered by interests other than one's own, then that freedom is less than worthless - it's oppression.
Amir Butler

To the press alone, chequered as it is with abuses, the world is indebted for all the triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression.
James Madison

Together we have travelled a long road to be where we are today. This has been a road of struggle against colonial and apartheid oppression.
Thabo Mbeki

Tolerance implies no lack of commitment to one's own beliefs. Rather it condemns the oppression or persecution of others.
John F. Kennedy

Under adversity, under oppression, the words begin to fail, the easy words begin to fail. In order to convey things accurately, the human being is almost forced to find the most precise words possible, which is a precondition for literature.
Rita Dove

War, famine, poverty and oppression of the workers will continue while woman makes life cheap. They will cease only when she limits her reproductivity and human life is no longer a thing to be wasted.
Margaret Sanger

We have a right, also, in various ways, to act upon our unfavorable opinion of anyone, not to the oppression of his individuality, but in the exercise of ours.
John Stuart Mill

We must not enable anyone to impose his personal view regarding religion on others by force, oppression, or pressure.
Shirin Ebadi

We shall all respect the principles of each other and do nothing that would be regarded as an act of oppression to any portion of the people.
Alexander Mackenzie

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

What had begun as a movement to free all black people from racist oppression became a movement with its primary goal the establishment of black male patriarchy.
bell hooks

What we call soul has been around a long time. It comes out of a particular culture that is African in origin, but influenced by 250 years of slavery, as well as other forms of racial oppression.
Roy Ayers

When a system of oppression has become institutionalized it is unnecessary for individuals to be oppressive.
Florynce R. Kennedy

When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression no matter how holy the motives.
Robert A. Heinlein

Without Liberty, Law loses its nature and its name, and becomes oppression. Without Law, Liberty also loses its nature and its name, and becomes licentiousness.
James Q. Wilson

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.
Learned Hand