“And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed.”

— John Steinbeck , book The Grapes of Wrath

Source: The Grapes of Wrath

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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John Steinbeck 366

American writer 1902–1968

Theodore Sturgeon book Venus Plus X

Section 41 (p. 128)
Venus Plus X (1960)

“Repression can only go up to a point. When it becomes too acute, the instruments of repression, namely the army and the police, have been proved time and time again in history to have turned their guns on their masters.”

Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015) First Prime Minister of Singapore

Opposition leader Lee Kuan Yew, Straits Times, May 5, 1959
1950s

“I was only a working-class boy from a Nationalist ghetto, but it is repression that creates the revolutionary spirit of freedom.”

Bobby Sands (1954–1981) Irish volunteer of the Provisional Irish Republican Army

Republican News http://larkspirit.com/hungerstrikes/bios/sands.html, (16 December 1978)
Other writings
Context: I was only a working-class boy from a Nationalist ghetto, but it is repression that creates the revolutionary spirit of freedom. I shall not settle until I achieve liberation of my country, until Ireland becomes a sovereign, independent socialist republic.

“This movie is about the fact that personal repression gives rise to larger political oppression.”

Gary Ross (1956) American film director

On his film Pleasantville (1998), as quoted in Review of Pleasantville by Edward Johnson-Ott http://www.imdb.com/reviews/149/14904.html
Context: This movie is about the fact that personal repression gives rise to larger political oppression.… That when we're afraid of certain things in ourselves or we're afraid of change, we project those fears on to other things, and a lot of very ugly social situations can develop.

“If we refuse…what are the prospects? Repression, and nothing but repression, and it is a very uncomfortable repression; a kind of repression from which we shall get neither credit nor success. It is the repression of the masses of the people, the great proportion of these masses being women and children. It is the repression not of organisations and not of bodies; it will develop into the repression of the whole of the population. … If, on the other hand, you wish to bind India to you by bonds of confidence, to make her happy within your Empire and Commonwealth, if you wish to hear her praise you in gratitude and remain with you in pride, then accept the work that has been done by the Conference, and instruct the Government to proceed with it to a complete conclusion.”

Ramsay MacDonald (1866–1937) British statesman; prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1931-01-26/debates/8a5b21f7-05dc-4c09-b195-075ec6261125/CommonsChamber in the House of Commons (26 January 1931) on Indian constitutional reform
1930s