Privilege Quotes

“Why did people like us have to fight on the opposite side of the planet while the President got to sit stateside in the safety of his white mansion?”
― Karie Fugett, Alive Day: A Memoir

“It is an easy thing to rejoice in the tents of prosperity”
― William Blake, The Four Zoas: The Torments of Love and Jealousy in the Death and Judgment of Albion the Ancient Man

“White people must show up and be willing to step out of the safe shelter that whiteness and the lack of direct impact can afford them. . . . For white people, in addition to all the reasons described earlier, risking is a form of solidarity.”
― Roxy Manning, How to Have Antiracist Conversations: Embracing Our Full Humanity to Challenge White Supremacy

“Even in its latterday form as a behavioural sink, a den of thieves and a bedlam of managerial fatuity, the magna civitas is still a magna solitudo, and a great solitude is what I need, while I work on the long task of forgiving myself for having been born blessed, and for a consuming melancholy that I never earned.”
― Clive James, Always Unreliable

“I am better than I have ever been, happier and more fulfilled and more deeply connected to those around me than I have ever known. I understand the privilege and the honor that brings, so I'm going to spend the rest of my years giving back the best I can. I remain keenly aware that I'll never have a bad day for the rest of my life. And to learn all that, all I had to do was die.”
― Jeremy Renner, My Next Breath

“If I focus on the benefits of the discovery versus the privilege of having discovered, I will discover how much I haven’t.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“All of them skated through life making choices that could be swept away and tidied up with incomprehensible ease simply because of who they were.”
― Kimi Cunningham Grant, The Nature of Disappearing

“Recognizing privilege is a healthy thing to do regardless of race or gender. It gives us access to empathy, and our nation could use that right now. Most of us have some form of privilege we can be thankful for. I also think when we are able to recognize our own privilege, we can begin to recognize inequality without feeling threatened. And maybe then, we can live more generously toward those around us.”
― Lolo Jones, Over It: How to Face Life’s Hurdles with Grit, Hustle, and Grace

“Sympathy isn't just a virtue, it's a privilege. Lucky people will feel more fortunate when they see unfortunate people. Healthy people will feel more healthy when they see disabled people. They'll be willing to spend a lot of money and time on this experience.”
― 爆炒小黄瓜, [歌剧魅影]魔鬼的美人

“The first time I met people like Vetch was when I went away to college: young people born to privilege, raised in privilege, and forever railing against privilege. The ones I knew all ended up living much the same lifestyle as their parents: elite professions, investment portfolios, global travel, vacation homes.”
― Sigrid Nunez, The Vulnerables

“Even from where I stood I could tell that they were American. Their body language. The way they wore their clothes. The rhythm of their loud voices stabbing at the morning's peace. Their confidence. That aura of entitlement. Kofi would later tell me that this entitlement swagger was something white men from every part of the world had when in rural Africa, but that is beside the point.”
― Nnedi Okorafor, The Book of Phoenix

“Immigration has become a privilege of the elite instead of a right of the desperate.”
― Heather Marsh, Binding Chaos: Mass Collaboration on a Global Scale

“No one is asking you to apologize for your privilege. They’re asking you to use it for those who don’t have it.”
― M. Gonzales

“...we need to let go of this idea that we’re good people, and really try to focus on understanding how our privilege creates challenges for people in the workplace.”
― Michelle P. King

“Tackling inequality is actually every leader's job, it is the definition of leadership. And it’s also the ultimate privilege. So, to be able to remove barriers that you yourself never have to experience is the ultimate form of privilege, and it’s actually a requirement of every leader. Because if you want to advance women in your workplace, you cannot do that without knowing what the barriers are, and taking steps to remove them. So, by and large leaders just simply haven’t been leading when it comes to equality in workplaces, so we need them to lead, it’s an imperative in terms of advancing women, and also advancing men and creating environments where men can show up differently.”
― Michelle P. King

“…who all his life has had anything he ever wanted and a hundred things he never thought to want.”
― Megan Abbott , Give Me Your Hand

“Netflix and Genocide (Sonnet)

Post-apocalyptic world will
never unfold like in the movies,
the post-apocalyptic world already
exists, may be not for you, as you're
born on the lucky side of privilege -

but that world of drought, flood, famine,
plague and persecution already exists -
the post-apocalyptic world is now,
ten steps from the door of the privileged.

Privilege defines whether
it's a post-apocalyptic world -
step outside the castle,
and apocalypse is everywhere.

Or you just Netflix and chill,
while human communities crumble!
Apes binge-watch the occupation,
deportation and genocide,
aloof from their smart-castle.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Neurosonnets: The Naskar Art of Neuroscience

“Pessimism, it turns out, is often indicative of exceptional privilege.”
― David A. Sinclair PhD & Matthew D. LaPlante

“WHEN YOU'RE USED TO PRIVILEGE
FEELS LIKE OPPRESSION.”
― Franklin Leonard

“WHEN YOU'RE USED TO PRIVILEGE
EQUALITY FEELS LIKE OPPRESSION.”
― Franklin Leonard

“It's funny, I know a lot of white atheists, but I don't know a lot of black ones, and I got a theory about why: Because atheism is really the height of white privilege. . .Think about it: Religion basically says, 'Hey, can we interest you in an after-life?' And white people are all like, 'No, thank you.' Like, 'Why? How much better can it be?”
― Neil Brennan

“You give your clients more reasons to patronize you again and again when you thank them again and again.”
― Utibe Samuel Mbom, Your Clients and You

“Leadership is a privilege, not a position—serve first, lift others, and shape a culture where everyone discovers the best leader within.”
― Farshad Asl

“Neither was Amber an “everywoman.” She was a Hollywood celebrity with money, an armored truck and driver, a revolving door of lawyers, PR wizards, and media connections at the ready. Her existence was totally alien from the day-to-day lives of most domestic-violence victims. This doesn’t mean she couldn’t also be a victim of abuse—but she wasn’t a stand-in for other survivors. Society tends to use celebrities as vessels to carry every social examination, every social problem, every social ill. But celebrities aren’t the norm they aren’t representative of anything except celebrity.

Amber said time and time again that she chose to speak up about Johnny’s abuse for those who don’t have a voice. But Amber hadn’t assumed a central role in the #MeToo movement on her own; she was aided and encouraged by powerful institutions like the ACLU and the Washington Post, which viewed her as an apt representative for the latest cause célèbre, betraying their own detachment from everyday victims. Throughout the trial and its aftermath, many sectors of the media held the line on this narrative, trumpeting Amber as a martyr for the movement and selling her experience as exemplary and relatable. In their analyses of the trial as a systemic failure and “the death of #MeToo,” they failed to see their own complicity in constructing a myopic, unrelatable notion of social justice.”
― Kelly Loudenberg, Hollywood Vampires: Johnny Depp, Amber Heard, and the Celebrity Exploitation Machine

“Paradox of martyrdom: that those linked to this history by birth, but now living in comfort, feel as if the story is theirs, while others continue to live it.”
― Sofia Samatar, The White Mosque

“All too often, students from nonmaterially privileged backgrounds assume a position of passivity—they be have as victims, as though they can only be acted upon against their will. Ultimately, they end up feeling they can only reject or accept the norms imposed upon them. This either/or often sets them up for disappointment and failure.”
― bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom

“When those of us in the academy who are working class or from working-class backgrounds share our perspectives, we subvert the tendency to focus only on the thoughts, attitudes, and experiences of those who are materially privileged.”
― bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom

“Did she honestly think she had the power to atone for someone else's sins, that she could exact justice with her wit, her superior thinking? People born of privilege are sometimes thus confused.”
― Ottessa Moshfegh, Eileen

“Supremacy and authority of all kinds are protected by the ignorance of one's own privilege.”
― Aiyana Goodfellow, Radical Companionship: Rejecting Pethood & Embracing Our Multispecies World

“But I like to think there are times when the thread of our faith in love is so resolute that we forget to search for signs.' She nodded to the crowd. 'When a babe learns to walk. When friends father around a sickbed, or deathbed, and sew a patch onto the family blanket. A couple's kiss on their wedding day, and the night that follows. We do not look for love, or heartbreak, because they, like the truest god, are ever with us.' She smiled. 'And it's a privilege to know them.”
― Gillig, Rachel