“Oppression involves a failure of the imagination: the failure to imagine the full humanity of other human beings.” —Margaret Atwood
“Renounce your sins by doing what is right, and your wickedness by being kind to the oppressed. It may be that then your prosperity will continue.” —Daniel 4:27
“Better to be lowly in spirit and among the oppressed than to share plunder with the proud.” —Proverbs 16:19
“The Lord is a refuge for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble.” —Psalm 9:9
“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.” —Frederick Douglass
“Everyone’s values are defined by what they will tolerate when it is done to others.” —William Greider
“Each time a person stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.” —Robert F. Kennedy
“In struggling for human dignity the oppressed people of the world must not allow themselves to become bitter or indulge in hate campaigns. To retaliate with hate and bitterness would do nothing but intensify the hate in the world. Along the way of life, someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate. This can be done only by projecting the ethics of love to the center of our lives.” —Martin Luther King, Jr.
“In Germany they came first for the Communists, 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.” —Martin Niemoeller
“Learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.” —Isaiah 1:17
“Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day. It is a choice based on the knowledge that we belong to God and have found in God our refuge and our safety and that nothing, not even death, can take God away from us. Joy is the experience of knowing that you are unconditionally loved and that nothing—sickness, failure, emotional distress, oppression, war, or even death—can take that love away.” —Henri Nouwen
“The great thing about serving the poor is that there is no competition.” —Eugene Rivers
“The media seems to think only abortion and gay marriage are religious issues. Poverty is a moral issue, it’s a faith issue, it’s a religious issue.” —Jim Wallis
“The apostle . . . [Paul’s] efforts were not confined to public speaking; there were many who could not have been reached in that way. He spent much time in house-to-house labor, thus availing himself of the familiar intercourse of the home circle. He visited the sick and the sorrowing, comforted the afflicted, and lifted up the oppressed. And in all that he said and did he magnified the name of Jesus.” —Ellen G. White (The Acts of the Apostles, p. 250)
