Quotes about Unjust Power Structures

John Lennon

Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it.

Confucius

In a well-governed nation poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a badly governed country wealth is something to be ashamed of.

Charles Gravier

That nation is as depraved in its politics as in its morals.... England is the monster against which we should be always prepared.

Jimmy Carter

All the legislation in the world cannot fix what is wrong with America.

The address came to be known as the “Malaise Speech.” There was great negative reaction to the President’s being negative about America, even as many agreed with his assessment of the problem.

Tariq Ali

If you're not engaged in challenging the lies of the system, what's the good of living in this society?

Catholic Church

The evil inequities and oppression of every kind which afflict millions of men and women today openly contradict Christ's Gospel and cannot leave the conscience of any Christian indifferent.

Ayn Rand

The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it.

William Mackergo Taylor

.d immorality;, The whole track of history is marked with the ruin of empires which having been founded in injustice, or perpetuated by wrong, were ultimately destroyed.

Eskinder Nega

All the great crimes of history, lest we forget, have their genesis in the moral wilderness of their times.

Rob Walton

The only reality is our society, and I mean this seriously, Western Society is a very sick society.

Andrew C. McCarthy

The world has changed. People who care nothing about norms can no longer be dismissed as a fringe. For generations, left-wing activists have instructed students and other groups that norms are the building blocks of a rigged system that deprives them of power and denies their “selfless” desires. We don’t want to acknowledge what this has wrought. We have norms because they safeguard foundational principles, such as due process, the presumption of innocence, and freedom from unreasonable and unwarranted police prying. But the Left is no longer attached to those principles.

His commentary here is related to the confirmation process for Judge Brett Kavanaugh.

Martin Luther King Jr.

A riot is the language of the unheard.

This quote is often cited to imply that Luther endorsed rioting which is not the case. See the related quotes from the same speech for the larger context of the quote which makes clear Luther’s true views of the unproductiveness and destructiveness of rioting.

Frederick Douglass

At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed.

Walter Rauschenbusch

As long as a man sees in our present society only a few inevitable abuses and recognizes no sin and evil deep-seated in the very constitution of the present order, he is still in a state of moral blindness… Christians should see through the fictions of capitalism.

He was a key figure in the Social Gospel movement which flourished in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th century. Many saw this movement as more dangerous than Communism and some even saw it as Communism. In America there have always been left and right wings of religion and one or the other tends to make the most noise at a particular era.

Unjust Power Structures Quotes