Masters And Slaves Quotes

I can't do it. I've been here before and it's not a room with a view. The only power I have is the negative power of withdrawal. If I don't withdraw I have no power at all. A relationship where one person has no power or negative power, isn't a relationship, it's the bond between master and slave.

Conversation is a partnership, not a relation of master and slave, as most people try to make it.

We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out.

The world of employer and employee, like that of master and slave, debases both.

No civilization can exist part free and part slave. ..We have never had any other kind of civilization. It has always been that way. There has always been a division of man. There has always been the conqueror and conquered-the master and slave-the ruler and the ruled-the oppressor and the oppressed. There has never been content nor unity. There has been only discontent and disunity.

Every one must understand that, whatever be the evil of slavery, it is not increased by its diffusion. Every one familiar with it knows that it is in proportion to its sparseness that it becomes less objectionable. Wherever there is an immediate connexion between the master and slave, whatever there is of harshness in the system is diminished.

We are all hostages, and we are all terrorists. This circuit has replaced that other one of masters and slaves, the dominating and the dominated, the exploiters and the exploited. It is worse than the one it replaces, but at least it liberates us from liberal nostalgia and the ruses of history.

Nations are not communities and never have been. The history of any country, presented as the history of a family, conceals the fierce conflicts of interest (sometimes exploding, often repressed) between conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, capitalists and workers, dominators and dominated in race and sex. And in such as world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, as Albert Camus suggested, not to be on the side of the executioners.

Kings and their subjects, masters and slaves, find a common level in two places - at the foot of the cross, and in the grave.

Slavery is so intolerable a condition that the slave can hardly escape deluding himself into thinking that he is choosing to obey his master's commands when, in fact, he is obliged to. Most slaves of habit suffer from this delusion and so do some writers, enslaved by an all too personal style.

The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it.

Money is a new form of slavery, and distinguishable from the old simply by the fact that it is impersonal - that there is no human relation between master and slave.

I demanded a realm in which I should be both master and slave at the same time: The world of art is the only such realm.

It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners.

A man is no less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years.

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.

Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves.

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood.