To be oppressed means to be deprived of your ability to choose.

Being oppressed means the absence of choices

When we oppress others, we end up oppressing ourselves.

Keeping people neurotic and depressed and ignorant and self-doubting is oppressive.

In the presence of a government which had enlarged its power over the lives and the thoughts and opinions of citizens and which did not hesitate to use that power, the whole citizenry was intimidated. Editors, writers, commentators were intimidated. Men whose opinions did not conform to the reigning philosophy were driven from the air, from magazines and newspapers. While American citizens who were moved by a deep and unselfish devotion to the ideals of this Republic—however wrong-headed that may be in the light of the new modes of ‘freedom’—were forced into silence, the most blatant and disruptive revolutionary lovers of the systems of both fascism and Communism and that illegitimate offspring of both—Red fascism—were lording it over our minds.

So what oppresses and scares us? It is our own thoughts, obviously.

I think a have so much fear about speaking out or just having an opinion on something.

How do you feel when someone tries to impose their thinking on you? If a family member, friend, or colleague came up to you and said, “Don’t think about this; here’s your opinion,” you’d try to get away from that person as soon as you possibly could. Yet, when we immediately reach for the Internet to provide us with information, we’re essentially inviting the same thing.

Whenever you are about to be oppressed, you have a right to resist oppression: whenever you conceive yourself to be oppressed, conceive yourself to have a right to make resistance, and act accordingly. In proportion as a law of any kind—any act of power, supreme or subordinate, legislative, administrative, or judicial, is unpleasant to a man, especially if, in consideration of such its unpleasantness, his opinion is, that such act of power ought not to have been exercised, he of course looks upon it as oppression: as often as anything of this sort happens to a man—as often as anything happens to a man to inflame his passions,—this article, for fear his passions should not be sufficiently inflamed of themselves, sets itself to work to blow the flame, and urges him to resistance. Submit not to any decree or other act of power, of the justice of which you are not yourself perfectly convinced. If a constable call upon you to serve in the militia, shoot the constable and not the enemy;—if the commander of a press-gang trouble you, push him into the sea—if a bailiff, throw him out of the window. If a judge sentence you to be imprisoned or put to death, have a dagger ready, and take a stroke first at the judge.

Social oppression is at work when the ways of others diminish who we are or stop us from pursuing our own goals. Often the most highly adaptive among us are the least aware of this process, and often they are socially the least successful and authentic — they have adapted into a predictable character and have lost their spontaneity and authenticity.

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.

So what oppresses and scares us? It is our own thoughts, obviously, What overwhelms people when they are about to leaves friends, family, old haunts and their accustomed way of life? Thoughts.

It is that same fear, the fear of ostracism that causes people to conform
and not question commonly accepted opinions or popular trends.

The one thing ... that is truly ugly is the climate of hate and intimidation, created by a noisy few, which makes the decent majority reluctant to air in public their views on anything controversial. ... Where all pretend to be thinking alike, it's likely that no one is thinking at all.