“Ours is one continual struggle against a degradation sought to be inflicted upon us by the Europeans, who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw Kaffir whose occupation is hunting, and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with and, then, pass his life in indolence and nakedness.”

David Bomberg "The Bomberg Papers", ed. Patrick Swift, X: A Quarterly Review, Vol 1, No 3, June 1960
Context: Speaking generally Art endevours to reveal what is true and needs to be free. All things said regarding Art are subject to contradiction. An artist whose integrity sustains his strength to make no compromise with expediency is never degraded. His life work will resemble the integrating character of the primaries in the Spectrum. At the beginning, of the middle period, and at the end… I approach drawing solely for structure. I am perhaps the most unpopular artist in England – and only because I am draughtsman first and painter second. Drawing demands a theory of approach, until good drawing becomes habit – it denies all rules. It requires high discipline… Drawing demands freedom, freedom demands liberty to expand in space – this is progress. By the extension of democracy – good draughtsmanship is – Democracy’s visual sign. To draw with integrity replaces bad habits with good, youth preserved from corruption. The hand works at high tension and organises as it simplifies, reducing to barest essentials, stripping all irrelevant matter obstructing the rapidly forming organisation which reveals the design. This is drawing.

Dover 2005, p. 162
The Ego and Its Own (1845)

Source: The Limits To Capital (2006 VERSO Edition), Chapter 7, Overaccumulation And 'First Cut' Theory, p. 203
Context: The inner logic that governs the laws of motion of capitalism is cold, ruthless and inexorable, responsive only to the law of value. Yet value is a social relation, a product of a particular historical process. Human beings were organizers, creators and participants in that history. We have, Marx asserts, built a vast social enterprise which dominates us, delimits our freedoms and ultimately visits upon us the worst forms of degradation.

In a Democracy, Palestinian Lawmaker Khalida Jarrar Would Be Free (June 21, 2018)

On the beheading of Eugene Armstrong. Statement accompanying a video of the beheading of US hostage Eugene Armstrong https://www.irishtimes.com/news/abu-musab-al-zarqawi-in-quotes-1.786124 The Irish Times (September 2004)

GMA News http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/154536/news/nation/palace-senators-lgus-to-switch-off-lights-on-earth-hour
2009

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)

2010s, The world must not forsake Yemen's struggle for freedom (2011)

Interview (1961) http://www.radiodiaries.org/mandela/t_movement.html
1960s
Context: There are thousands of people who feel that it is useless and futile for us to continue talking peace and non-violence — against a government whose only reply is savage attacks on an unarmed and defenceless people. And I think the time has come for us to consider, in the light of our experiences at this day at home, whether the methods which we have applied so far are adequate.