TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY ®  •  TODAYINSCI ®
Celebrating 24 Years on the Web
Find science on or your birthday

Today in Science History - Quickie Quiz
Who said: “I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, ... finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell ... whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index O > Category: Oppression

Oppression Quotes (6 quotes)

Die Religion ist der Seufzer der bedrängten Kreatur, das Gemüt einer herzlosen Welt, wie sie der Geist geistloser Zustände ist. Sie ist das Opium des Volks. Die Aufhebung der Religion als des illusorischen Glücks des Volks ist die Forderung seines wirklichen Glücks.
Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of spiritless conditions. It is the opium of the people. To abolish religion as the illusory happiness of the people is to demand their real happiness.
Karl Marx
'Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie. Einleitung' (1844), Karl Marx Fredrich Engels (1964), 378-9.
Science quotes on:  |  Abolish (13)  |  Condition (362)  |  Creature (242)  |  Demand (131)  |  Gem (17)  |  Happiness (126)  |  Heart (243)  |  Heartless (3)  |  Opium (7)  |  People (1031)  |  Religion (369)  |  Sigh (3)  |  Spirit (278)  |  Spiritless (2)  |  World (1850)

During the 1930s, Nazi oppression drove numerous scientists to Great Britain and the United States, and they were a key factor in the development of the nuclear bomb—a development widely touted in the United States as based on “Yankee know-how.” Except that virtually all the Yankees had foreign accents.
In 'Combatting U.S. Scientific Illiteracy', Los Angeles Times (31 Mar 1989).
Science quotes on:  |  Accent (5)  |  Britain (26)  |  Development (441)  |  Foreign (45)  |  Great (1610)  |  Great Britain (2)  |  Know (1538)  |  Nazi (10)  |  Nuclear (110)  |  Nuclear Bomb (6)  |  Numerous (70)  |  Scientist (881)  |  State (505)  |  United States (31)

Geology depends on impressions made by floods, earthquakes, volcanoes. The mountains tell the story of their oppressions and rebellions. The outstanding data of this science of Mother Earth are those furnished by the most violent impressions that mark an epoch in evolution
In I Am an Impure Thinker (1970), 16.
Science quotes on:  |  Data (162)  |  Depend (238)  |  Earth (1076)  |  Earthquake (37)  |  Epoch (46)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Flood (52)  |  Furnish (97)  |  Geology (240)  |  Impression (118)  |  Mark (47)  |  Most (1728)  |  Mother (116)  |  Mountain (202)  |  Outstanding (16)  |  Rebellion (3)  |  Story (122)  |  Tell (344)  |  Violent (17)  |  Volcano (46)

It has often been said that power corrupts. But it is perhaps equally important to realize that weakness, too, corrupts. Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many. Hatred, malice, rudeness, intolerance, and suspicion are the faults of weakness. The resentment of the weak does not spring from any injustice done to them but from the sense of inadequacy and impotence. We cannot win the weak by sharing our wealth with them. They feel our generosity as oppression. St. Vincent De Paul cautioned his disciples to deport themselves so that the poor “will forgive them the bread you give them.”
In 'The Awakening of Asia', The Ordeal of Change (1963), 12.
Science quotes on:  |  Bread (42)  |  Caution (24)  |  Corrupt (4)  |  Disciple (8)  |  Equally (129)  |  Fault (58)  |  Feel (371)  |  Forgive (12)  |  Generosity (7)  |  Give (208)  |  Hatred (21)  |  Important (229)  |  Impotence (8)  |  Inadequacy (4)  |  Injustice (4)  |  Intolerance (8)  |  Malice (6)  |  Often (109)  |  Poor (139)  |  Power (771)  |  Realize (157)  |  Resentment (6)  |  Rudeness (5)  |  Say (989)  |  Sense (785)  |  Share (82)  |  Sharing (11)  |  Spring (140)  |  St (2)  |  Suspicion (36)  |  Themselves (433)  |  Weak (73)  |  Weakness (50)  |  Wealth (100)  |  Will (2350)  |  Win (53)

Benjamin Banneker quote: so numerous a part of my brethren under groaning captivity and cruel oppression
Sir how pitiable is it to reflect, that altho you were so fully convinced of the benevolence of the Father of mankind, and of his equal and impartial distribution of those rights and privileges which he had conferred upon them, that you should at the Same time counteract his mercies, in detaining by fraud and violence so numerous a part of my brethren under groaning captivity and cruel oppression, that you should at the Same time be found guilty of that most criminal act, which you professedly detested in others, with respect to yourselves.
In Letter to Thomas Jefferson (19 Aug 1791). In John Hazlehurst Boneval Latrobe, Memoir of Benjamin Banneker: Read Before the Maryland Historical Society, at the Monthly Meeting, May 1, 1845 (1845), 15-16.
Science quotes on:  |  Act (278)  |  Benevolence (11)  |  Captivity (2)  |  Conferred (2)  |  Convinced (23)  |  Counteract (5)  |  Criminal (18)  |  Cruel (25)  |  Detest (5)  |  Distribution (51)  |  Equal (88)  |  Father (113)  |  Fraud (15)  |  Groan (6)  |  Guilt (13)  |  Impartial (4)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Mercy (12)  |  Most (1728)  |  Numerous (70)  |  Other (2233)  |  Pity (16)  |  Privilege (41)  |  Profess (21)  |  Reflect (39)  |  Respect (212)  |  Right (473)  |  Slave (40)  |  Time (1911)  |  Violence (37)

Twice in my life I have spent two weary and scientifically profitless years seeking evidence to corroborate dearly loved hypotheses that later proved to be groundless; times such as these are hard for scientists—days of leaden gray skies bringing with them a miserable sense of oppression and inadequacy.
From Advice to a Young Scientist (1979), 6.
Science quotes on:  |  Corroborate (2)  |  Evidence (267)  |  Gray (9)  |  Hard (246)  |  Hypothesis (314)  |  Inadequacy (4)  |  Leaden (2)  |  Life (1870)  |  Love (328)  |  Misery (31)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Sense (785)  |  Sky (174)  |  Spent (85)  |  Time (1911)  |  Two (936)  |  Weary (11)  |  Year (963)


Carl Sagan Thumbnail In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) -- Carl Sagan
Quotations by:Albert EinsteinIsaac NewtonLord KelvinCharles DarwinSrinivasa RamanujanCarl SaganFlorence NightingaleThomas EdisonAristotleMarie CurieBenjamin FranklinWinston ChurchillGalileo GalileiSigmund FreudRobert BunsenLouis PasteurTheodore RooseveltAbraham LincolnRonald ReaganLeonardo DaVinciMichio KakuKarl PopperJohann GoetheRobert OppenheimerCharles Kettering  ... (more people)

Quotations about:Atomic  BombBiologyChemistryDeforestationEngineeringAnatomyAstronomyBacteriaBiochemistryBotanyConservationDinosaurEnvironmentFractalGeneticsGeologyHistory of ScienceInventionJupiterKnowledgeLoveMathematicsMeasurementMedicineNatural ResourceOrganic ChemistryPhysicsPhysicianQuantum TheoryResearchScience and ArtTeacherTechnologyUniverseVolcanoVirusWind PowerWomen ScientistsX-RaysYouthZoology  ... (more topics)
Sitewide search within all Today In Science History pages:
Visit our Science and Scientist Quotations index for more Science Quotes from archaeologists, biologists, chemists, geologists, inventors and inventions, mathematicians, physicists, pioneers in medicine, science events and technology.

Names index: | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |

Categories index: | 1 | 2 | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |
Thank you for sharing.
- 100 -
Sophie Germain
Gertrude Elion
Ernest Rutherford
James Chadwick
Marcel Proust
William Harvey
Johann Goethe
John Keynes
Carl Gauss
Paul Feyerabend
- 90 -
Antoine Lavoisier
Lise Meitner
Charles Babbage
Ibn Khaldun
Euclid
Ralph Emerson
Robert Bunsen
Frederick Banting
Andre Ampere
Winston Churchill
- 80 -
John Locke
Bronislaw Malinowski
Bible
Thomas Huxley
Alessandro Volta
Erwin Schrodinger
Wilhelm Roentgen
Louis Pasteur
Bertrand Russell
Jean Lamarck
- 70 -
Samuel Morse
John Wheeler
Nicolaus Copernicus
Robert Fulton
Pierre Laplace
Humphry Davy
Thomas Edison
Lord Kelvin
Theodore Roosevelt
Carolus Linnaeus
- 60 -
Francis Galton
Linus Pauling
Immanuel Kant
Martin Fischer
Robert Boyle
Karl Popper
Paul Dirac
Avicenna
James Watson
William Shakespeare
- 50 -
Stephen Hawking
Niels Bohr
Nikola Tesla
Rachel Carson
Max Planck
Henry Adams
Richard Dawkins
Werner Heisenberg
Alfred Wegener
John Dalton
- 40 -
Pierre Fermat
Edward Wilson
Johannes Kepler
Gustave Eiffel
Giordano Bruno
JJ Thomson
Thomas Kuhn
Leonardo DaVinci
Archimedes
David Hume
- 30 -
Andreas Vesalius
Rudolf Virchow
Richard Feynman
James Hutton
Alexander Fleming
Emile Durkheim
Benjamin Franklin
Robert Oppenheimer
Robert Hooke
Charles Kettering
- 20 -
Carl Sagan
James Maxwell
Marie Curie
Rene Descartes
Francis Crick
Hippocrates
Michael Faraday
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Francis Bacon
Galileo Galilei
- 10 -
Aristotle
John Watson
Rosalind Franklin
Michio Kaku
Isaac Asimov
Charles Darwin
Sigmund Freud
Albert Einstein
Florence Nightingale
Isaac Newton


by Ian Ellis
who invites your feedback
Thank you for sharing.
Today in Science History
Sign up for Newsletter
with quiz, quotes and more.