Cesar Chavez Quotes

You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore.

Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can't ride you unless your back is bent.

There will be no prison which can hold our movement down.

I have always looked on disobedience toward the oppressive as the only way to use the miracle of having been born.

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

An oppressed people will always rise.

If you are going to organize and ask for commitment, you cannot go to the most desperately poor. They are not likely to take action. If you stand on a man's head and push it into the dirt, he may not even see the heel of your boot. But if his whole face is already above ground, he can see your heel and he can see freedom ahead.

It was imperative to make common cause with the oppressed in order to secure a new system opposed to the ambitions and governing habits of the oppressors.

... within every form of oppression lies the seeds of liberation.

Fear is the greatest form of oppression. The best way to rise up in protest is to live your life to its fullest!

When the fear of jail disappears, repression puts heart into the people.

I said to myself, Malala, you must be brave. You must not be afraid of anyone. You are only trying to get an education. You are not committing a crime.

Freedom only comes through persistent revolt, through persistent agitation, through persistently rising up against the system of evil.

The people have now come to realize that the only way to deal with the oppressor is to deal on our own terms and this was done.

You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore.

Young people are capable, when aroused, of bringing down the towers of oppression and raising the banners of freedom.

Liberation is a praxis: the action and reflection of men and women upon their world in order to transform it.

We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.

Coming out, all the way out, is offered more and more as the political solution to our oppression.

Power is never so overwhelming that there's no room for resistance.

People have to liberate themselves, because liberation is not a single act. It's a question of eternal vigilance. Otherwise, you'll just become enslaved by someone else.

You can jail a Revolutionary, but you can't jail the Revolution.

The oppressed never free themselves - they do not have the necessary strengths.

Those truly committed to liberation must reject the banking concept in its entirety, adopting instead a concept of women and men as conscious beings and consciousness as consciousness intent upon the world.

The walls, the bars, the guns and the guards can never encircle or hold down the idea of the people.