Slaves Master Quotes & Sayings

If a slave were to raise his voice to his master, he risked all manner of punishment. Yet what was possible in many circumstances was to lift one's voice in song. This was a major ingredient in what is now known as blues and gospel. Slaves may have been regarded as subhuman by their cruel captors, but through music, they were proud and dignified. — Henry Rollins

A nation of slaves is always prepared to applaud the clemency of their master who, in the abuse of absolute power, does not proceed to the last extremes of injustice and oppression. — Edward Gibbon

There is no such thing as liberty,The greatest liberators are usually slaves of an idea. The freest people are slaves to convention and public opinion, and more still, slaves to the industrial machine. There is no such thing as liberty. You only change one sort of domination for another. All we can do is to choose our master. — D.H. Lawrence

The blacks of this region are a cheerful, careless, dirty, race, not hard worked, and in many respects indulgently treated. It is of course the desire of the master that his slaves shall be laborious; on the other hand it is the determination of the slave to lead as easy a life as he can. The master has the power of punishment on his side; the slave, on his, has invincible inclination, and a thousand expedients learned by long practice ... Good natured though imperfect and slovenly obedience on one side, is purchased by good treatment on the other. — William C. Bryant

There is nothing grand or noble in having the use of a slave, in so far as he is a slave; or in issuing commands about necessary things. But it is an error to suppose that every sort of rule is despotic like that of a master over slaves, for there is as great a difference between the rule over freemen and the rule over slaves as there is between slavery by nature and freedom by nature . — Aristotle.

People who consider themselves educated, open-minded and progressive do not want to think of themselves as the slaves of a master, or even the subjects of a ruling class. Because of this, much rationalizing and obfuscating has been done in an attempt to deny the fundamental nature of "government" as a ruling class. — Larken Rose

Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the people, for the people and by the people, but a government for Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street. The great common people of this country are slaves, and monopoly is the master ... Let the bloodhounds of money who have dogged us thus far beware. — Mary Elizabeth Lease

That was when I realized we weren't born to be
slaves. It was ignorant for any man to think he could be the master of another. We were all meant to be free, and somewhere there were good people helping to heal this broken world. — Jay Grewal

From this moment there would be no question of virtue or morality; for despotism cui ex honesto nulla est spes, wherever it prevails, admits no other master; it no sooner speaks than probity and duty lose their weight and blind obedience is the only virtue which slaves can still practice. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The media has outright lied on me. They reported that I called myself Osama's [Bin Laden] 'sex slave,' apparently unaware that sex slaves aren't allowed to look their master in the eye, write poetry with him or go on hunting excursions with him. — Kola Boof

One could call a master a good master because he did not whip his slaves, but ultimately he was still and owner of men, and men were not made to be owned. — Nick Lake

What all Greek philosophers, no matter how opposed to polis life, took for granted is that freedom is exclusively located in the political realm, that necessity is primarily a prepolitical phenomenon, characteristic of the private household organization, and that force and violence are justified in this sphere because they are the only means to master necessity - for instance, by ruling over slaves - and to become free. Because all human beings are subject to necessity, they are entitled to violence toward others; violence is the prepolitical act of liberating oneself from the necessity of life for the freedom of world. This freedom is the essential condition of what the Greeks called felicity, eudaimonia, which was an objective status depending first of all upon wealth and health. To be poor or to be in ill health meant to be subject to physical necessity, and to be a slave meant to be subject, in addition, to man-made violence. — Hannah Arendt

A woman who slaves for a man does not have a marriage; she has a master. — Jeanette Winterson

The real names of our people were destroyed during slavery. The last name of my forefathers was taken from them when they were brought to America and made slaves, and then the name of the slave master was given, which we refuse, we reject that name today and refuse it. I never acknowledge it whatsoever. — Malcolm X

If you're poor and ignorant, with a child, you're a slave. Meaning that you're never going to get out of it. These women are in bondage to a kind of slavery that the 13th Amendment just didn't deal with. The old master provided food, clothing and health care to the slaves because he wanted them to get up and go to work in the morning. And so on welfare: you get food, clothing and shelter
you get survival, but you can't really do anything else. You can't control your life. — Joycelyn Elders

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. — W. H. Auden

And what will be their fate?" he asked. "Forgive me master, but I am curious to know, so that my heart may prepare itself."
"Flesh without spirit," I said. "Life without hope, the slavery of mankind-a bondage so hopeless that slaves will no longer know they are slaves. Wealth without happiness, abundance without the power to enjoy it. The death of the spirit. — Mika Waltari

Once you cease to be a master, once you throw off your master's yoke, you are no longer human rubbish, you are a human being, and all the things that adds up to. So, too, with the slaves. Once they are no longer slaves, once they are free, they are no longer noble and exalted; they are just human beings. — Jamaica Kincaid

We are masters of our characters and in turn, slaves of their outgrowth. — Mohammed Ali Bapir

The white man has succeeded in subduing the world by forcing everybody to think his way ... The white man's propaganda has made him the master of the world, and all those who have come in contact with it and accepted it have become his slaves. — Marcus Garvey

Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant. They bring the judgment of heaven on a Country. As nations can not be rewarded or punished in the next world they must be in this. By an inevitable chain of causes & effects providence punishes national sins, by national calamities. — George Mason

What Dred Scott's master might lawfully do with Dred Scott, in the free state of Illinois, every other master may lawfully do with any other one, or 1,000 slaves, in Illinois, or in any other free state. — Roger B. Taney

No sublime wisdom asks to be worshipped or served; the greatest and the most honourable masters are those who refuse to have slaves! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

The great common people of this country are slaves, and monopoly is the master ... The politicians said we suffered from overproduction. Overproduction, when 10,000 little children, so statistics tell us, starve to death every year in the United States ... We will stand by our homes and stay by our fireside by force if necessary, and we will not pay our debts to the loan-shark companies until the government pays its debts to us. — Mary Elizabeth Lease

During the battle, Spartacus himself tried with frenzied
determination, the symbolism of which is obvious, to reach Crassus, who was commanding the Roman
legions. He wanted to perish, but in single combat with the man who symbolized, at that moment, every
Roman master; it was his dearest wish to die, but in absolute equality. He did not reach Crassus:
principles wage war at a distance and the Roman general kept himself apart. Spartacus died, as he wished,
but at the hands of mercenaries, slaves like himself, who killed their own freedom with his. In revenge for
the one crucified citizen, Crassus crucified thousands of slaves. The six thousand crosses which, after
such a just rebellion, staked out the road from Capua to Rome demonstrated to the servile crowd that
there is no equality in the world of power and that the masters calculate, at a usurious rate, the price of
their own blood. — Albert Camus

The Bible teaches us again and again that we are slaves to sin. Sin is not only in our nature, but it is our master. — R.C. Sproul

Now I had lived long enough and had heard enough from urchins my age and from other slaves, to distrust the person who calls himself merciful, or just, or kindly. Usually these are the most cruel, niggardly and selfish people, and slaves learn to fear the master who prefaces his remarks with tributes to his own virtues. — Elizabeth Borton De Trevino

It only stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master. — Ayn Rand

This oath is the oath we all swear. Not to a god, or a master, or even to the Ludus Achillea... but to our sisters who stand here with us. Our sisters. This is the oath that binds us all, one to one, all to all, so that we are no longer free. We belong to each other. We are bound to each other. In swearing to each other, we free ourselves from the outside world, from the world of men, from those who would seek to bind us to Fate and that which would make us slaves. We sacrifice our liberty so that, ultimately, we can be truly free. — Lesley Livingston

They may be convenient slaves, but slavery will have its constant effect, degrading the master and the abject dependent. — Mary Wollstonecraft

Whenever a man can get hold of numbers, they are invaluable: if correct, they assist in informing his own mind, but they are still more useful in deluding the minds of others. Numbers are the masters of the weak, but the slaves of the strong. — Charles Babbage

9 Masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Don't threaten them; remember, you both have the same Master in heaven, and he has no favorites. — Anonymous

Marriage, n: the state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all, two. — Ambrose Bierce

The first revolt is against the supreme tyranny of theology, of the phantom of God. As long as we have a master in heaven, we will be slaves on earth. — Mikhail Bakunin

We must be the masters, and not the slaves of nature; neither body nor mind must be our master, nor must we forget that the body is mine, and not I the body's. — Swami Vivekananda

And the slaves prided themselves on their master, saying: 'There is no better lord than ours under the sun. He feeds and clothes us well, and gives us work suited to our strength. He bears no malice, and never speaks a harsh word to any one. He is not like other masters, who treat their slaves worse than cattle: punishing them whether they deserve it or not, and never giving them a friendly word. He wishes us well, does good, and speaks kindly to us. We do not wish for a better life. — Leo Tolstoy

Just as the slave master required the slaves to imitate the image he had of them, so women, who live in a relatively powerless position, politically and economically, feel obliged by a kind of implicit force to live up to culture's image of what is female. — Susan Griffin

no master could be isolated from the dehumanizing effects of the rigorous discipline of the slave regime or from the disruptive intrusions of the market economy upon which that regime thrived. These central features of slavery, punishment and profit, destroyed for most slaveholders whatever remained of the elemental principle of the paternalist ethos: that masters were obliged to look to the needs of the slaves in return for the diligence and fidelity of the bondsmen. — James Oakes

Just as it is necessary to rob your enemies of their humanity, so you have to find a way of relinquishing responsibility for the evil you are about to commit. You must define yourself as a victim. It follows that you, in committing murder, even genocide, are merely acting in self-defence. It is the victim who is responsible. This was Hitler's constant and deeply paradoxical claim. As Jeffrey Herf points out, he and his propagandists had to maintain two completely contradictory ideas: 'one rooted in the grandiose idea of a master race and world domination, the other in the self-pitying paranoia of the innocent, beleaguered victim'.23 In general, as Vamik Volkan notes, dualists tend to combine 'paradoxical feelings of omnipotence and victimization'.24 On the one hand we are masters of the universe; on the other we are the devil's slaves. — Jonathan Sacks

Frederick Douglass, a former slave, witnessed and described that exact phenomenon among his fellow slaves, many of whom were proud of how hard they worked for their masters and how faithfully they did as they were told. From their perspective, a runaway slave was a shameful thief, having "stolen" himself from the master. — Larken Rose

What if a king made bad laws; laws so unnatural that a country broke them by declaring its freedom?" He threw his arms in the air. "Now you are spouting nonsense. Two slaves running away from their rightful master is not the same as America wanting to be free of England. Not the same at all." "How is it then that the British offer freedom to escaped slaves, but the Patriots don't? — Laurie Halse Anderson

Heavy hearts, heavy eyelids," said the master of the caravan.
"Huh?" Heather looked up in dismay, shocked to find she'd nearly been left behind as the caravan prepared to move on. Her last night's sleep had been fitful, full of dreams where Khalid made her suffer for running away. Now she felt drained and groggy, unable to get the images of Khalid spanking her over his knee and then ravishing her out of her tired head.
"Look," the caravan master said. "Riders approaching, a great armed party. No doubt they are searching for escaped slaves."
"No doubt." Heather straightened up wearily in the saddle, determined to outwit Khalid and conceal her true identity as a runaway. The one thing she was sure of was that capture would bring a fate worse than death. Already she could imagine Khalid tying her up, spanking her bottom, making her howl for mercy until she had no pride or will to resist. And then would come the true test of her virtue ... — Patricia Grasso

There is much in this world that hurts us, but if we let pain become our master, we live our lives as slaves. — Hannah Hart

Obedience is fickle that way. It's a virtue to its master but a vice to its slaves. — Holly Bodger

Unquestionably, it is the duty of every master to watch over the religious and moral culture of his slaves, and to give them every comfort and privilege that is not incompatible with the continued existence of the relations between them. — Roger B. Taney

Apparently the world today can no longer be anything other than a world of masters and
slaves because contemporary ideologies, those that are changing the face of the earth, have learned from
Hegel to conceive of history in terms of the dialectic of master and slave. If, on the first morning of the
world, under the empty sky, there is only a master and a slave; even if there is only the bond of master
and slave between a transcendent god and mankind, then there can be no other law in this world than the
law of force. Only a god, or a principle above the master and the slave, could intervene and make men's
history something more than a mere chronicle of their victories and defeats. — Albert Camus

At first sight, Paul's command that slaves obey their masters seems simply to endorse the status quo. But we need to see that what he writes here also subtly undermines it. First, it is significant that Paul chooses to address slaves at all, implying not only that they are assembled with the other Christians of the Colossian church to hear the letter being read but that they are responsible people who need to choose a certain kind of behavior. Second, Paul clearly relativizes the status of the slave's master by repeatedly reminding both slave (vv. 22, 23, 24) and master (4:1) of the ultimate "master" to whom both are responsible: the Lord Jesus Christ. Third, Paul never hints that he endorses the institution of slavery. He tells slaves and masters how they are to conduct themselves within the institution, but it is a bad misreading of Paul to read into his teaching approval of the institution itself. (For — Douglas J. Moo

In this world are many people who do not master their bodies. Such people say that no one can tell them what to do, not even God, and they think that in this way they have no master. In the end they become slaves to anything. — Michael D. O'Brien

For suppose that every tool we had could perform its task, either at our bidding or itself perceiving the need, and if-like the statues made by Daedalus or the tripods of Hephaestus, of which the poet says that "self-moved they enter the assembly of the gods" - shuttles in a loom could fly to and fro and a plectrum play a lyre all self-moved, then master-craftsmen would have no need of servants nor masters of slaves. — Aristotle.

A man is none the less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years. Neither are a people any the less slaves because permitted periodically to choose new masters. What makes them slaves is the fact that they now are, and are always hereafter to be, in the hands of men whose power over them is, and always is to be, absolute and irresponsible.6 — Lysander Spooner

Jesus Christ has bought us with His blood, but, alas, He has not had His money's worth! He paid for ALL, and He has had but a fragment of our energy, time and earnings. By an act of consecration, let us ask Him to forgive the robbery of the past, and let us profess our desire to be henceforth utterly and only for Him- His slaves, owning no master other than Himself. — F.B. Meyer

These people are committed to one person. They are Master's and slaves, or Doms and subs who don't share — B.S.M. Stoneking

If God is the master of the universe, then what are we? The slaves of the universe? If so, let each man become proud Spartacus! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

One leader, one people, signifies one master and millions of slaves. — Albert Camus

As a rule, we must not be the slaves of passion; rather, we must be the possessors of great passions. Through passion commences power, but passions should not direct our paths; rather, passions should be our bridled horses, with us commanding whence and to they be directed. Our passions must not take their own courses; but they must be directed by us into which course they ought to take. Modern day people blindly follow the notion that to be slaves to their passions is to be free! But for one to be the Master of one's passions is to be not only free - but powerful. — C. JoyBell C.

No, now the domestic market is full up with other planters' troublesome slaves. Our only salvation is to scientifically breed a stable order of docile Negro. I've come up with three tenets: Isolation. Religion. Family...." Master Ben — Jonathan Odell

Freedom, to be desirable, involves kindness, wisdom, and all the virtues of the free; but the free man as we have seen him in action has been, as of yore, only the master of many helots; and the slaves are still ill-fed, ill-clad, ill-taught, ill-housed, insolently treated, and driven to their mines and workshops by the lash of famine. — Robert Louis Stevenson

The white slave had taken from him by indirection what the black slave had taken from him directly and without ceremony. Both were plundered, and by the same plunderers. The slave was robbed by his master of all his earnings, above what was required for his bare physical necessities, and the white laboring man was robbed by the slave system, of the just results of his labor, because he was flung into competition with a class of laborers who worked without wages. The slaveholders blinded them to this competition by keeping alive their prejudice against the slaves as men
not against them as slaves. — Frederick Douglass

If every tool, when ordered, or even of its own accord, could do the work that befits it ... then there would be no need either of apprentices for the master workers or of slaves for the lords. — Aristotle.

She had not been his and now she was his. Or she had always been his and just now knew it. Cora's attention detached itself. It floated someplace past the burning slave and the great house and the lines that defined the Randall domain. She tried to fill in its details from stories, sifting through the accounts of slaves who had seen it. Each time she caught hold of something - buildings of polished white stone, an ocean so vast that there wasn't a tree in sight, the shop of a colored blacksmith who served no master but himself - it wriggled free like a fish and raced away. She would have to see it for herself if she were to keep it. — Colson Whitehead

Drill and uniforms impose an architecture on the crowd. An army's beautiful. But that's not all; it panders to lower instincts than the aesthetic. The spectacle of human beings reduced to automatism satisfies the lust for power. Looking at mechanized slaves, one fancies oneself a master. — Aldous Huxley

Revenge! Workingmen, to Arms!!! . . . You have for years endured the most abject humiliations; . . . you have worked yourself to death . . . your Children you have sacrificed to the factory lord - in short: you have been miserable and obedient slaves all these years: Why? To satisfy the insatiable greed, to fill the coffers of your lazy thieving master? When you ask them now to lessen your burdens, he sends his bloodhounds out to shoot you, kill you! . . . To arms we call you, to arms! — Howard Zinn

As females in a patriarchal culture, we were not slaves of love; most of us were and are slaves of longing
yearning for a master who will set us free and claim us because we cannot claim ourselves — Bell Hooks

As a slave one cannot undertake obligations without the consent of one's master. As a citizen one cannot undertake obligations unless the legal system of the State in which one holds citizenship permits one to do so. Neither a slave nor a citizen is a free person, although those who are held as slaves or citizens may well be free persons: it is just that their freedom is not respected. — Frank Van Dun

But capital not only lives upon labour. Like a master, at once distinguished and barbarous, it drags with it into its grave the corpses of its slaves, whole hecatombs of workers, who perish in the crises. — Karl Marx

Look at the tyranny of party
at what is called party allegiance, party loyalty
a snare invented by designing men for selfish purposes
and which turns voters into chattels, slaves, rabbits; and all the while, their masters, and they themselves are shouting rubbish about liberty, independence, freedom of opinion, freedom of speech, honestly unconscious of the fantastic contradiction; and forgetting or ignoring that their fathers and the churches shouted the same blasphemies a generation earlier when they were closing thier doors against the hunted slave, beating his handful of humane defenders with Bible-texts and billies, and pocketing the insults nad licking the shoes of his Southern master. — Mark Twain

33 "Take heed, keep on the alert; for you do not know when the appointed time is. 34"It is like a man, away on a journey, who upon leaving his house and putting his slaves in charge, assigning to each one his task, also commanded the doorkeeper to stay on the alert. 35"Therefore, be on the alert - for you do not know when the master of the house is coming, whether in the evening, at midnight, at cockcrowing, or in the morning - 36lest he come suddenly and find you asleep. 37"And what I say to you I say to all, 'Be on the alert!' — Anonymous

The supreme nobility of a Roman emperor does not consist in being a master of slaves, but in being a lord of free men, who loves freedom even in those who serve him. — Julius Evola

Masters are doers of the Word of Thelema. That is, they do their own True Will. And they are willing to pay the price for it. They take the greatest chance of all, that of being their own God, their own Individual, their own Self, and their own Leader and Master in a world of senseless followers and slaves. They accept complete responsibility for their own life and they always strive for excellence, continuously moving in an upward and onward manner, with energy and enthusiasm, discipline and diligence, persistence and power. They are strong, able to turn everything to the advantage of their True Will, and able to endure and surmount all the necessary trials and errors that lead to the fulfillment of their Chosen Path. Nothing is against them; they are not victims, and they make no excuses. — David Cherubim

One hundred and seven. Since charity obliges us to wish well to the souls of all men, and religion ought to alter nothing in any man's civil estate or right, it shall be lawful for slaves, as well as others, to enter themselves, and be of what church or profession any of them shall think best, and, therefore, be as fully members as any freeman. But yet no slave shall hereby be exempted from that civil dominion his master hath over him, but be in all things in the same state and condition he was In before. — John Locke

We're becoming slaves; the war scatters us in all directions, takes away everything we own, snatches the bread from out of our mouths; let me at least retain the right to decide my own destiny, to laugh at it, defy it, escape it if I can. A slave? Better to be a slave than a dog who thinks he's free as he trots along behind his master. She listened to the sound of men and horses passing by. They don't even realise they're slaves, she said to herself, and I, I would be just like them if a sense of pity, solidarity, the "spirit of the hive" forced me to refuse to be happy. — Irene Nemirovsky

Verbal virtuosities or the gratuitous expense of time or money that is presupposed by material or symbolic appropriation of works of art, or even, at the second power, the self-imposed constraints and restrictions which make up the "asceticism of the privileged" (as Marx said of Seneca) and the refusal of the facile which is the basis of all "pure" aesthetics, are so many repetition of that variant of the master-slave dialectic through which the possessors affirm their possession of their possessions. In so doing, they distance themselves still further from the dispossessed, who, not content with being slaves to necessity in all its forms, are suspected of being possessed by the desire for possession, and so potentially possessed by the possessions they do not, or do not yet, possess. — Pierre Bourdieu