“Because class oppression of women and children couched in the phraseology of "cute" it is much harder to fight than open oppression.”

— Shulamith Firestone, book The Dialectic of Sex

Source: The Dialectic of Sex (1970), Chapter Four

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Shulamith Firestone20

Feminist 1945–2012

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“The nature of women's oppression is unique: women are oppressed as women, regardless of class or race; some women have access to significant wealth, but that wealth does not signify power; women are to be found everywhere, but own or control no appreciable territory; women live with those who oppress them, sleep with them, have their children — we are tangled, hopelessly it seems, in the gut of the machinery and way of life which is ruinous to us.”

Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005) Feminist writer

Woman Hating, ch. 9, p. 23, E.P. Dutton, New York (1974).

“It is doubtful if the oppressed ever fight for freedom. They fight for pride and power — power to oppress others.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Quoted in War and Conflict Quotations: A Worldwide Dictionary of Pronouncements from Military Leaders, Politicians, Philosophers, Writers and Others (1997) by Michael C. Thomsett and Jean F. Thomsett
Paraphrased variant: "I doubt if the oppressed ever fight for freedom..."
Context: It is doubtful if the oppressed ever fight for freedom. They fight for pride and power — power to oppress others. The oppressed want above all to imitate their oppressors; they want to retaliate.

“Though the sex class system may have originated in fundamental biological conditions, this does not guarantee once the biological basis of their oppression has been swept away that women and children will be freed.”

Shulamith Firestone book The Dialectic of Sex

Source: The Dialectic of Sex (1970), Chapter One

“When men are oppressed, it's a tragedy. When women are oppressed, it's tradition.”

Letty Cottin Pogrebin (1939) American author, journalist, lecturer, and social justice activist

Source: Deborah, Golda, and Me: Being Female and Jewish in America

“A central tenet of modern feminist thought has been the assertion that "all women are oppressed." This assertion implies that women share a common lot, that factors like class, race, religion,, and it is both appropriate and necessary that we speak against such oppression.”

Bell Hooks book Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

p. 5 https://books.google.com/books?id=L1WvBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA5. <br class="br">Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (1984), Chapter 1: Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory

“No oppressed, people will fight, and endure,”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Fragment on the Constitution and the Union http://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln4/1:264?rgn=div1;view=fulltext (c. January, 1861); published in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (1953) by Roy P. Basler, vol. 4, p. 168 <br class="br">1860s <br class="br">Context: All this is not the result of accident. It has a philosophical cause. Without the Constitution and the Union, we could not have attained the result; but even these, are not the primary cause of our great prosperity. There is something back of these, entwining itself more closely about the human heart. That something, is the principle of "Liberty to all" — the principle that clears the path for all — gives hope to all — and, by consequence, enterprize, and industry to all. The expression of that principle, in our Declaration of Independence, was most happy, and fortunate. Without this, as well as with it, we could have declared our independence of Great Britain; but without it, we could not, I think, have secured our free government, and consequent prosperity. No oppressed, people will fight, and endure, as our fathers did, without the promise of something better, than a mere change of masters. The assertion of that principle, at that time, was the word, "fitly spoken" which has proved an "apple of gold" to us. The Union, and the Constitution, are the picture of silver, subsequently framed around it. The picture was made, not to conceal, or destroy the apple; but to adorn, and preserve it. The picture was made for the apple — not the apple for the picture. So let us act, that neither picture, or apple shall ever be blurred, or bruised or broken. That we may so act, we must study, and understand the points of danger.

“I do feel visceral revulsion at the burka because for me it is a symbol of the oppression of women.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

As quoted in Richard Dawkins causes outcry after likening the burka to a bin liner https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/7936221/Richard-Dawkins-causes-outcry-after-likening-the-burka-to-a-bin-liner.html (10 August 2010), The Telegraph.

“Feminist emphasis on "common oppression" in the United States was less a strategy for politicization than an appropriation by conservative and liberal women of a radical political white women were able to make their interests the primary focus of feminist movement and employ a rhetoric of commonality that made their condition synonymous with "oppression." Who was there to demand a change in vocabulary? What other group of women in the United States had the same access to universities, publishing houses, mass media, money? Had middle class black women begun a movement in which they had labeled themselves "oppressed," no one would have taken them seriously. Had they established public forums and given speeches about their "oppression," they would have been criticized and attacked from all sides. This was not the case with white bourgeois feminists for they could appeal to a large audience of women, like themselves, who were eager to change their lot in life. Their isolation from women of other class and race groups provided no immediate comparative base by which to test their assumptions of common oppression.”

Bell Hooks book Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

Source: Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (1984), Chapter 1: Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory, p. 6.

“They have no consciousness of themselves as persons or as members of an oppressed class.”

Paulo Freire (1921–1997) educator and philosopher

Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968, English trans. 1970)

“The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Actually from State and Revolution by Vladimir Lenin, paraphrasing Marx in The Civil War in France.
Misattributed

“Because class oppression of women and children couched in the phraseology of "cute" it is much harder to fight than open oppression.”

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Shulamith Firestone20

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