100 Quotes About Privilege

Margaret Atwood, the Canadian novelist, once asked a group of women at a university why they felt threatened by men. The women said they were afraid of being beaten, raped, or killed by men. She then asked a group of men why they felt threatened by women. They said they were afraid women would laugh at them. Molly Ivins

Never have I seen so many young, privileged, people trying so hard to be happy. There are countless articles written about it, blogs named for it, workshops attending to it. Who ever said we’re supposed to be happy all the time, anyway? We’re not. And the pressure to do so might be what’s making us unhappy to begin with. It’s OK if you’re not completely content with your life twenty-four hours a day. Can you imagine what a boring person you’d be if you were? Going through shit storms, feeling uninspired, hating the way you look and having guilt over not accomplishing enough are just some of the things that make you interesting, relatable and human. Not to mention, if you’re reading this, then you have internet access and if you have internet access, it stands to reason that you have a computer, which makes me think you probably have a place to live, with electricity and plenty of food to eat and clean clothes to wear, which are all things that an enormous amount of people living on the planet today do not have. This is not to say that people shouldn’t strive to better their positions in life, however it seems like so many of us are no longer content with a regular amount of happy, yet dead-set on being maniacally jubilant, all of the time. Kelly Rheel

If I have never had, or worse yet, I have lost the conviction that life (despite all of the blows it wields and the savagery that it spawns) is nonetheless an incalculable privilege, I will have in that single loss forfeited the whole of my life and effectively wiped out any hope that I can or will do anything other than exist. Craig D. Lounsbrough

I have the impression that our children are much more excited about going to school than children in other countries are. They think of it as a special privilege. Going to school, being with other children, getting books and pencils - all of that is like a dream for them. Cheryl Benard

The middle class and upper middle class are highly attached to the institution of school explicitly as a sorting mechanism, as a way of justifying privileges of which middle-class members are already central beneficiaries. These critics suggest that the entire notion of schools as meritocracies actually reifies and reinforces class privilege--making those whom school rewards (those who already have a lot of benefits) feel they deserve the privileges they have. Kirsten Olson

We start a relationship with someone not only because of how great they are but how great they make us feel. And because they have granted us this extraordinary gift–a chance to experience love, joy, compassion, and security –it is our exclusive privilege to make them feel wonderful about themselves, especially during days when they, themselves, don't feel so wonderful. Kamand Kojouri

Responsibility I believe accrues through privilege. People like you and me have an unbelievable amount of privilege and therefore we have a huge amount of responsibility. We live in free societies where we are not afraid of the police; we have extraordinary wealth available to us by global standards. If you have those things, then you have the kind of responsibility that a person does not have if he or she is slaving seventy hours a week to put food on the table; a responsibility at the very least to inform yourself about power. Beyond that, it is a question of whether you believe in moral certainties or not. Noam Chomsky

Why are you not smarter? It's only the rich who can't afford to be smart. They're compromised. They got locked years ago into privilege. They have to protect their belongings. No one is meaner than the rich. Trust me. But they have to follow the rules of their shitty civilised world. They declare war, they have honour, and they can't leave. But you two. We three. We're free. Michael Ondaatje

Nobody's busting into YOUR apartment at three in the morning, are they? Well, then don't worry about what they're doing in South Korea and places like that. It's like the standard of living. Are you content to achieve your higher standard of living at the expense of people all over the world who've got a lower standard of living? Most Americans would say yes. Now we ask the question, are you content to enjoy your political freedom at the expense of people who are less free? I think they would also say yes. . William S. Burroughs

I walked home with a lighter step, for that night had knocked something loose in me, something long overdue to be knocked. At long last, I saw that group for what they were, with a few exceptions - a queer assortment of layabouts and late risers, most overdrawn at the bank or at least cutting into principal, only interested in who's going in the drawer at the Maidstone Club or their wedge on the fifteenth hole at Pebble Beach or dressing down the staff about a bit of shell in the lobster while shoveling canapés in. Jinx had done me a favor, freed me of any lingering allegiances to New York Society, snipped my fear of being on their bad side. Martha Hall Kelly

Independence that has declared its ‘independence’ from the sure and certain compass of sound morals is nothing more than rogue greed having scantily dressed itself in the garb of independence while running off the cliff of anarchy. Craig D. Lounsbrough

The United States, almost alone today, offers the liberties and the privileges and the tools of freedom. In this land the citizens are still invited to write their plays and books, to paint their pictures, to meet for discussion, to dissent as well as to agree, to mount soapboxes in the public square, to enjoy education in all subjects without censorship, to hold court and judge one another, to compose music, to talk politics with their neighbors without wondering whether the secret police are listening, to exchange ideas as well as goods, to kid the government when it needs kidding, and to read real news of real events instead of phony news manufactured by a paid agent of the state. This is a fact and should give every person pause. E.B. White

Unless institutional power reinforces the hurt and prejudice suffered by a group, it is not oppression. By definition, a person of color cannot be racist, or a woman sexist, because they do not have the institutionalized power to act on their prejudices. Also, by definition, all white people are racist, not just because of the personal attitudes that we usually think of as racist, but because of the privilege white skin brings in our society. Whites cannot say they are not racist because they are born into a society that teaches racism and reinforces white privilege every day even before they can be aware of it. Whites can choose, however, to be active antiracists, which means making a commitment to a lifelong process of learning to recognize racism in themselves and in the institutions they are part of and taking steps to stop it. Linda Stout

A society is patriarchal to the degree that it promotes male privilege by being male dominated, male identified, and male centered. It is also organized around an obsession with control and involves as one of its key aspects the oppression of women.. If men occupy superior positions, it's a short leap to the idea that men must be superior..[and that] whatever men do will tend to be seen as having greater value. Allan G. Johnson

Few pretty and privileged young women really understand the essential injustice of biology.. For most of her life as a woman, the rules were perfectly clear cut: other women were the enemy, and all love was war. She had rejected feminism, quite openly, as a crutch for the envious and ugly, and regarded married women as holding the upper hand if, unlike her own mother, they had any strength of character. The weaknesses and dependencies imposed by fecundity had never entered into her calculations. . Amanda Craig

To have them putting him on, trying him on, trying him out while he himself puts them on like a sock over a foot onto the stub of himself--his extra sensitive thumb, his tentacle, his delicate, stalked slug's eye which extrudes, expands, winces and shrivels back into himself when touched wrongly, grows big again. Bulging a little at the tip, traveling forward as if along a leaf into them, avid for vision. To achieve vision in this way; this journey into a darkness that is composed of women--a woman--who can see in darkness while he himself strains blindly forward. Margaret Atwood

Women everywhere are always expected to continually imagine what one situation or another would look like from a male point of view. Men are almost never expected to do the same for women. So deeply internalized is this pattern of behavior that many men react to any suggestion that they might do otherwise as if it were itself an act of violence. David Graeber

Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety. And at such a moment, unable to see and not daring to imagine what the future will now bring forth, one clings to what one knew, or dreamed that one possessed. Yet, it is only when a man is able, without bitterness or self-pity, to surrender a dream he has long possessed that he is set free - he has set himself free - for higher dreams, for greater privileges. Unknown

Aristocracy's only an admission that certain traits which we call fine - courage and honor and beauty and all that sort of thing - can best be developed in a favorable environment, where you don't have the warpings of ignorance and necessity. F. Scott Fitzgerald

It's time to demand that the faithful keep their personal choices, preferences and beliefs in irrational and sometimes dangerous things strictly private. Everyone is absolutely free to believe what they want, provided they do not harass others (or force, or kill them) . But nobody has the right to insist on privileges simply because they are supporters of one or other of the world's many religions." From: "Gesels van een imaginaire god"(' Scourges of an imaginary god') . A.J. Beirens

Leadership crisis erupt when people who have not learnt how to obey instructions are given the privilege to give commands. Leaders are experienced servants. Israelmore Ayivor

Without knowing it, the adults in our lives practiced a most productive kind of behavior modification. After our chores and household duties were done we were give "permission" to read. In other words, our elders positioned reading as a privilege - a much sought-after prize, granted only to those goodhardworkers who earned it. How clever of them. Mildred Armstrong Kalish

History shows that it does not matter who is in power or what revolutionary forces take over the government, those who have not learned to do for themselves and have to depend solely on others never obtain any more rights or privileges in the end than they had in the beginning. Carter G. Woodson

Memory is a few lines snipped from a larger story that we are privileged to tuck away between the pages of our minds. Craig D. Lounsbrough

History is only ever invisible when it abets your sense of self, your desires, your ambitions, when it carries your life along in a kind of frictionless way. Garth Greenwell

Privilege doesn't just insulate people from the consequences of their prejudice, it cuts them off from their humanity. DaShanne Stokes

Maybe looking away is about privilege. I need to think harder and longer about my choices and recognize that choosing whom I see and whom I don't see is one of the most hurtful functions of privilege. Unknown

Everyone has a responsibility towards this larger family of man, but especially if you're privileged, that increases your responsibi Susan Sarandon

What is the point of a relationship if not to grant two people the very private privilege to uplift one another every day? Kamand Kojouri

I had the privilege of being able to choose, or at least have the opportunity to work at, being anything but an actor. Benedict Cumberbatch

What is pain to a man? A privilege! James Clavell

And were you punished? No. Why? Because you were rich."" Money and talent aren't the same thing."" That’s because you can inherit money that was earned by your ancestors, " said Sister Carlotta. "And everybody recognizes the value of money, while only select groups recognize the value of talent. Orson Scott Card

To me bathtubs are the epitome of luxury. Either you have no money to own one or you have no time to use one. Akilnathan Logeswaran

If my heart is set on pursuing real treasures, my mind must be fixed solely on the privilege of enjoying them and freed of the obsession of owning them. Craig D. Lounsbrough

When you see your feet with no footwear, also see those with no feet. Amit Kalantri

We have been blessed with the privilege to live life. May we live to the fullness. Lailah Gifty Akita

Genealogy itself is something of a privilege, coming far more easily to those of us for whom enslavement, conquest, and dispossession of our land has not been our lot. Tim Wise

We all know that there are language forms that are considered impolite and out of order, no matter what truths these languages might be carrying. If you talk with a harsh, urbanized accent and you use too many profanities, that will often get you barred from many arenas, no matter what you’re trying to say. On the other hand, polite, formal language is allowed almost anywhere even when all it is communicating is hatred and violence. Power always privileges its own discourse while marginalizing those who would challenge it or that are the victims of its power. . Unknown

But by this time I was acutely conscious of the gap between law and justice. I knew that the letter of the law was not as important as who held the power in any real-life situation. Howard Zinn

Those with unearned privileges often spin things as 'political correctness' to further silence those they wish to oppress. DaShanne Stokes

From those to whom privilege and opportunity are given, we have the right to expect much. John Vasconcellos

Power makes you lazy. Insofar as our earlier theoretical discussion of structural violence revealed anything, it was this: that while those in situations of power and privilege often feel it as a terrible burden of responsibility, in most ways, most of the time, power is all about what you don't have to worry about, don't have to know about, and don't have to do. David Graeber

The act of claiming an identity can be transformational. It can provide healing and empowerment. It can weld solidarity within a community. And, perhaps most importantly, it can diminish power from an oppressor, a dominant group. Simon Tam

Is it your implication that no good will come of this expedition?’‘ Oh it will, sir; there’s no denying that.’ Captain Chillingworth’s words emerged very slowly, as if they had been pulled up from a deep well of bitterness. ‘I am sure it will do a great deal of good for some of us. But I doubt I’ll be of that number, or that many Chinamen will. The truth is, sir, that men do what their power permits them to do. We are no different from the Pharaohs or the Mongols: the difference is only that when we kill people we feel compelled to pretend that it is for some higher cause. It is this pretence of virtue, I promise you, that will never be forgiven by history. Amitav Ghosh

We live with this tortured feeling that we must create that which in reality we have the privilege of finding. Craig D. Lounsbrough

The gift of life is the only privilege you desperately need to turn your goals and dreams into realities. Unknown

Abundant living is realizing that life is a privilege whether it’s adhering to our scripts or not. Craig D. Lounsbrough

You don't necessarily have to do anything once you acknowledge your privilege. You don't have to apologize for it. You need to understand the extent of your privilege, the consequences of your privilege, and remain aware that people who are different from you move through and experience the world in ways you might never know anything about. They might endure situations you can never know anything about. . Roxane Gay

There is a theory that men do not need Paganism because they have endless avenues of societal power available. Why use spells when one can get a bank loan with little trouble? The world already bends over backward to accommodate men, so why perfect the art of magickally shaping it? Thomm Quackenbush

Privileged groups, like everyone else, want to think well of themselves and to believe that they are acting generously and justly. Joanna Russ

I could go into their reality any time I chose to, but they could never come into mine. This is what I called 'helping' them. Agnostic Zetetic

Those who are most sensitive about "politically incorrect" terminology are not the average black ghetto-dweller, Asian immigrant, abused woman or disabled person, but a minority of activists, many of whom do not even belong to any "oppressed" group but come from privileged strata of society. Theodore J. Kaczynski

The American flag doesn't give her glory on a peaceful, calm day. It's when the winds pick up and become boisterous, do we see her strength. When she unfolds her hand, and shows her frayed fingers, where we see the stretch of red-blood lines of man that fought for this land. The purity of white stripes that strips our sins, and the stars of Abraham's covenant, broad in a midnight blue sky. The rights our forefathers established. As it waves high in the currents of freedom, where the Torch of Liberty shines over the sea, does she give meaning to unity. When we strive as one nation, or when it drops half-mast, to a fallen soldier. . Anthony Liccione

We can breathe in the sweet scent of a tepid summer’s meadow after the kiss of a warm rain, and in the very same moment we can stand utterly breathless underneath the expanse of untold galaxies that breech the very edges of the universe itself. Such are the privileges we enjoy because of God’s unimaginable imagination. Craig D. Lounsbrough

It is our privilege and our adventure to discover our own special light. Evelyn Dunbar

Inviting someone to work for pay is a sacred privilege and a trust. It must be regarded a high honor to be able to give another person work, and neither employer nor employee should abuse this relationship Judy Frankel

If you haven’t figured it out yet, an absolutely certain way to lose something as quickly as possible is to forget the privilege you have to possess it in the first place. Craig D. Lounsbrough

When a freedom is taken away from you, I suppose, you recognize it as a privilege, not a right. Jodi Picoult

And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know. J.k. Rowling

Our imagination is God’s ingenious gift that hands us the privilege of romping and playing in realities that we can’t see only because we’ve yet to create them. Craig D. Lounsbrough

Never having experienced inequality, therefore, the majority of straight white men will be absolutely oblivious to their own advantages — not because they must necessarily be insensitive, sexist, racist, homophobic or unaware of the principles of equality; but because they have been told, over and over again, that there is no inequality left for them — or anyone else — to experience — and everything they have experienced up to that point will only have proved them right. Let the impact of that sink in for a moment. By teaching children and teenagers that equality already exists, we are actively blinding the group that most benefits from inequality — straight white men — to the prospect that it doesn’t. Privilege to them feels indistinguishable from equality, because they’ve been raised to believe that this is how the world behaves for everyone. And because the majority of our popular culture is straight-white-male-dominated, stories that should be windows into empathy for other, less privileged experiences have instead become mirrors, reflecting back at them the one thing they already know: that their lives both are important and free from discrimination. And this hurts men. It hurts them by making them unconsciously perpetrate biases they’ve been actively taught to despise. It hurts them by making them complicit in the distress of others. It hurts them by shoehorning them into a restrictive definition masculinity from which any and all deviation is harshly punished. It hurts them by saying they will always be inferior parents and caregivers, that they must always be active and aggressive even when they long for passivity and quietude, that they must enjoy certain things like sports and beer and cars or else be deemed morally suspect. It hurts them through a process of indoctrination so subtle and pervasive that they never even knew it was happening , and when you’ve been raised to hate inequality, discovering that you’ve actually been its primary beneficiary is horrifying — like learning that the family fortune comes from blood money. Blog post 4/12/2012: Why Teaching Equality Hurts Men . Foz Meadows

Is there no end to his diguises of benevolence? Margaret Atwood

Men’s economic privilege, their social value, the prestige of marriage, the usefulness of masculine support–all these encourage women to ardently want to please men. They are on the whole still in a state of serfdom. It follows that woman knows and chooses herself not as she exists for herself but as man defines her. She thus has to be described first as men dream of her since her being-for-men is one of the essential factors of her concrete condition. . Simone De Beauvoir

Life is made of MOMENTS. From the beginning to the end of EXISTENCE. But not everything that happens to BE necessarily one day will lose its title. Time has the PRIVILEGE to create and destroy, but above all, to ETERNIZE. Time has the power to promote meetings, disagreements, but mainly TEACHING. Influence in the most desperate situations as in the most beautiful MEMORY. Time is loss, but it is CURE. It is the second of birth and the whole LIFE. Time is lord! But like every sovereign, it is only when there is something that proposes such a position. Time with us can be EVERYTHING, but without reason, can be nothing. Then he becomes righteous, RECIPROCAL, respect and him will respects you. Embrace the time! Give your hand for a moment, one with yourself! Make "the sense" HAPPEN in your favor! Just WANT! The beginning of everything is the time, but for the most OUTSTANDING events, the WILL was indispensable! THINK, even for 1 minute! . Unknown

We were made to get along, to be together, andit’s a truth that’s medically attested... Love and dance and connection strengthen every bodily system, while isolation, rage and sadness poison them with cortisol. Steven Heighton

The rich never have a chance of being neighborly to their equals. The best they can do is feel mawkish about the sufferings of their inferiors, which they can never begin to understand, and to be patronizingly kind. Aldous Huxley

How do you explain a world that gifts evil men with privilege and wealth and looks the other way while they torment and abuse the weakest members of society? C.S. Harris

From the point of view of wealth, there is no difference between need, comfort and pleasure Michel Foucault

Anytime the rich and poor combine, we should listen to whoever has the least power. Rich people are conditioned to assess the world through our privileges. The powerful tend to discredit or ignore the marginalized perspective because we can. We are shielded from the effects of a lopsided equation; we reap the benefits, not the losses. We don't mean to do this (or even know we do), but we evaluate other communities through the lens of advantage assuming we know best, have the most to offer. In doing so we unintentionally elevate our perception. Jen Hatmaker

It contained a sad, but too common story of the hard-heartedness of the wealthy, and the misery endured by the children of the highborn. Blood is not water, it is said, but gold with them is dearer far than the ties of nature; to keep and augment their possessions being the aim and end of their lives, the existence, and, more especially, the happiness of their children, appears to them a consideration at once trivial and impertinent, when it would compete with family views and family greatness. To this common and and iniquitous feeling these luckless beings were sacrificed; they had endured the worst, and could be injured no more; but their orphan child was a living victim, less thought of than the progeny of the meanest animal which might serve to augment their possessions. Mrs. Baker felt some complacency on reading this letter; with the common English respect for wealth and rank, she was glad to find that her humble roof had sheltered a man who was the son – she did not exactly know of whom, but of somebody, who had younger sons and elder sons, and possessed, through wealth, the power of behaving frightfully ill to a vast number of persons. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

A smaller government reflecting the needs of the middle class and poor is superior to a big government reflecting the needs of the privileged and powerful. Robert B. Reich

There was a problem: No one cared about human rights anymore, not at home or abroad. They cared about growth--hoped for and celebrated in all the newspapers, invoked by zealous bureaucrats in every self-serving television interview. On this matter, the filmmaker was agnostic--he came from money, and couldn't see the urgency. Like many of his ilk, he sometimes confused poverty (which must be eradicated! ) with folklore (which must be preserved! ), but it was a genuine confusion, without a hint of ill intention, which only made it more infuriating. . Unknown

Some people envied Ronan’s money. Adam envied his time. To be as rich as Ronan was to be able to go to school and do nothing else, to have luxurious swathes of time in which to study and write papers and sleep. Adam wouldn’t admit it to anyone, least of all Gansey, but he was tired. He was tired of squeezing homework in between his part-time jobs, of squeezing in sleep, squeezing in the hunt for Glendower. The jobs felt like so much wasted time: In five years, no one would care if he’d worked at a trailer factory. They’d only care if he’d graduated from Aglionby with perfect grades, or if he’d found Glendower, or if he was still alive. And Ronan didn’t have to worry about any of that. Maggie Stiefvater

Treatments worked well enough for us to get by. Most people lived into old age, but the medication, like everything else, has never been free. Life was a privilege, not a right, apparently. Something you had to struggle for when you were unlucky enough to be born at the intersection of poverty and bad genes. Jacqueline Koyanagi

So they had all had more troubles than she. Did that really make them superior? If two men were walking along the street and a brick fell on one, missing the other, did that make the injured one a better person? Elizabeth Harrower

For the mentally disturbed, Marie knew these sandwich visits might be the only dependable moments in their lives. She also knew she delivered the sandwiches for her own sanity. Something would crumble inside of her if she ever walked by a homeless person and pretended not to notice. Or simply didn't care. In a way, she believed that homeless people were treated as Indians had always been treated. Badly. The homeless were like an Indian tribe, nomadic and powerless, just filled with more than any tribe's share of crazy people and cripples. So, a homeless Indian belonged to two tribes, and was the lowest form of life in the city. The powerful white men of Seattle had created a law that made it illegal to sit on the sidewalk. That ordinance was crazier and much more evil than any homeless person. Sometimes Marie wondered if she worked so hard at anything only because she hated powerful white men. She wondered if she went to college and received good grades just because she was looking for revenge. Sherman Alexie

The best luck always happens to people who don't need it. Robert Penn Warren

If you think being straight means you're being discriminated against, you're probably misreading your privilege. DaShanne Stokes

Those who benefit from unearned privilege are too often quick to discount those who don't. DaShanne Stokes

It was not, then, race and culture calling out of the South in 1876; it was property and privilege, shrieking to its own kind, and privilege and property heard and recognized the voice of its own. W.E.B. Du Bois

Whiteness is not a culture. There is Irish culture and Italian culture and American culture - the latter, as Albert Murray pointed out, a mixture of the Yankee, the Indian, and the Negro (with a pinch of ethnic salt); there is youth culture and drug culture and queer culture; but there is no such thing as white culture. Whiteness has nothing to do with culture and everything to do with social position. It is nothing but a reflection of privilege, and exists for no reason other than to defend it. Without the privileges attached to it, the white race would not exist, and the white skin would have no more social significance than big feet. Noel Ignatiev

Take a little thought experiment. Imagine all the rampage school shooters in Littleton, Colorado; Pearl, Mississippi; Paducah, Kentucky; Springfield, Oregon; and Jonesboro, Arkansas; now imagine they were black girls from poor families who lived instead in Chicago, New Haven, Newark, Philadelphia, or Providence. Can you picture the national debate, the headlines, the hand-wringing? There is no doubt we’d be having a national debate about inner-city poor black girls. The entire focus would be on race, class, and gender. The media would doubtless invent a new term for their behavior, as with wilding two decades ago. We’d hear about the culture of poverty, about how living in the city breeds crime and violence. We’d hear some pundits proclaim some putative natural tendency among blacks toward violence. Someone would likely even blame feminism for causing girls to become violent in a vain imitation of boys. Yet the obvious fact that virtually all the rampage school shooters were middle-class white boys barely broke a ripple in the torrent of public discussion. This uniformity cut across all other differences among the shooters: some came from intact families, others from single-parent homes; some boys had acted violently in the past, and others were quiet and unassuming; some boys also expressed rage at their parents (two killed their parents the same morning), and others seemed to live in happy families. . Michael S. Kimmel

Privilege is when your voice is the norm but still you claim to be unheard. DaShanne Stokes

What does religious freedom mean if we would use it as a cover for hate and privilege? DaShanne Stokes

It's terrifying to think you could become the next statistic. DaShanne Stokes

Our success will not come from the acts of our forefathers, but can come alone from what we are doing now. Those who have inherited rich blood can use that richness in building greatness in themselves, but those who have not the privilege of such inheritance need not be discouraged. They can create their own rich blood and make it as rich as they like. Christian D. Larson

Racism is dead only to those who've closed their eyes and ears to the whole world around them. DaShanne Stokes

What could she do, bound as she was by the tyranny of silence? She dared not explain the girl to herself...that wilfully selfish tyranny of silence evolved by a crafty old ostrich of a world for its own well-being and comfort. The world hid its head in the sands of convention, so that seeing nothing it might avoid Truth...if silence is golden it is also in this case, very expedient. Radclyffe Hall