State Exploitation Quotes & Sayings

Exploitation and oppression is not a matter of race. It is the system, the apparatus of world-wide brigandage called imperialism, which made the Powers behave the way they did. I have no illusions on this score, nor do I believe that any Asian nation or African nation, in the same state of dominance, and with the same system of colonial profit-amassing and plunder, would have behaved otherwise. — Han Suyin

Somebody bring me some water/can't you see I'm burning alive. — Melissa Etheridge

I look upon an increase in the power of the State with the greatest fear because, although while apparently doing good by minimizing exploitation, it does the greatest harm to mankind by destroying individuality which lies at the heart of all progress. — Mahatma Gandhi

The picture of the free market is necessarily one of harmony and mutual benefit; the picture of State intervention is one of caste conflict, coercion, and exploitation. — Murray Rothbard

I wasn't shocked and I'm still not shocked. It's total exploitation, with everything up for grabs. Health care, gone. Destroy the environment in search of more profit. State-sponsored violence. Targeted incarceration. You know what's happening, though: The whole country is becoming a reservation. — Sherman Alexie

Globally the Greens have arisen like a spontaneous combustion, a reaction to the narrow-minded state-backed exploitation of resources and wealth for a few at the expense of the many. — Bob Brown

There are lots of things I could have done for the money, but I've made a great living doing the things I want to do. — Ben Elton

Love and hate; for only those who know how to hate know how to love. We keep this capacity; and as this alone serves to maintain and develop the moral sentiments in every animal society, so much the more will it be enough for the human race. We only ask one thing, to eliminate all that impedes the free development of these two feelings in the present society, all that perverts our judgment:
the State, the church, exploitation; judges, priests, governments, exploiters. — Pyotr Kropotkin

Certain tools are destructive no matter who owns them, whether it be the Mafia, stockholders, a foreign company, the state,
or even a workers' commune. Networks of multilane highways, long. range, wide-band-width transmitters, strip mines, or
compulsory school systems are such tools. Destructive tools must inevitably increase regimentation, dependence,
exploitation, or impotence, and rob not only the rich but also the poor of conviviality, which is the primary treasure in many
so-called "underdeveloped" areas. — Ivan Illich

The use of the word royalty, as fee to a proprietor for the exploitation of a work or property, derives from the period when the sovereign assumed title to all wealth of the realm. It was the struggle for freedom from these encroachments of the state that chiefly marked the Nineteenth Century, and established everywhere constitutional regimes of limited authority. In the Twentieth Century, however, we have witnessed a gradual and almost unrestricted movement back to state authoritarianism, primarily in the economic sphere, accompanied by the spread of state monopoly and intervention. — Elgin Groseclose

They were complicated years. The order of the world in which we had grown up was dissolving. The old skills resulting from long study and knowledge of the correct political line suddenly seemed senseless. Anarchist, Marxist, Gramscian, Communist, Leninist, Trotskyite, Maoist, worker were quickly becoming obsolete labels or, worse, a mark of brutality. The exploitation of man by man and the logic of maximum profit, which before had been considered an abomination, had returned to become the linchpins of freedom and democracy everywhere. Meanwhile, by means legal and illegal, all the accounts that remained open in the state and in the revolutionary organizations were being closed with a heavy hand. One might easily end up murdered or in jail, and among the common people a stampede had begun. — Elena Ferrante

In a way, if we want to make the postseason, we feel like we have to win out. We have got some good games coming up, but we are going to have to buckle down and get the job done somehow. — Cartier Martin

Civilization on Earth planet was equated with selfishness and greed; those people who lived in a civilized state exploited those who did not. There were shortages of vital commodities on Earth planet, and the people in the civilized nations were able to monopolize those commodities by reason of their greater economic strength. This imbalance appeared to be at the root of the
disputes. — Christopher Priest

Upstairs when someone for any reason is unable to state his particular reasons for existing, or stake a position, say, on the United States vs. Vietnam youthful enthusiasm vs. boredom scathing denunciation vs. racist exploitation the dollar-for-dollar precipitous decline of all sympathy and mercy . . . someone else gives up seeking the difference between things that could've been and weren't and things that didn't have to be but were. — Philip Schultz

The problems of the global economy are not based in perception, but in the reality of prices, balance sheets and income statements, vast concentrations of wealth and power, precarious systemic imbalances, ruthless exploitation, and command economies mismanaged by Central State/Bank policy and manipulation. — Charles Hugh Smith

I hope to do multiple characters throughout my life that are separate from me. I think it's a cop-out if you play yourself in everything. — Kat Graham

Your 'Pringle' contains 30% potato, that yoghurt has the same amount of sugar as ice cream, that whole grain cereal bar may be no better for you than a snickers. — Mark Bittman

Every historical form of society is in its foundation a form of organization of labor. While every previous form of society was an organization of labor in the interests of a minority, which organized its State apparatus for the oppression of the overwhelming majority of the workers, we are making the first attempt in world history to organize labor in the interests of the laboring majority itself. — Leon Trotsky

There's something about the Foreign Service that takes the guts out of people. — Evan G. Galbraith

For example, tolerance designates a real problem - when I criticize it, I am, as a rule, asked: "But how can you be in favor of intolerance towards foreigners, of misogyny, of homophobia?" Therein resides the catch: of course I am not against tolerance per se; what I oppose is the (contemporary and automatic) perception of racism as a problem of intolerance. Why are so many problems today perceived as problems of intolerance, rather than as problems of inequality, exploitation, or injustice? Why is the proposed remedy tolerance, rather than emancipation, political struggle, or even armed struggle? The source of this culturalization is defeat, the failure of directly political solutions such as the social-democratic welfare state or various socialist projects: "tolerance" has become their post-political ersatz. — Slavoj Zizek

Anarchism is really a synonym for socialism. The anarchist is primarily a socialist whose aim is to abolish the exploitation of man by man. Anarchism is only one of the streams of socialist thought, that stream whose main components are concern for liberty and haste to abolish the State. — Daniel Guerin

Since production must always precede predation, the free market is anterior to the State. The State has never been created by a "social contract"; it has always been born in conquest and exploitation. — Murray N. Rothbard

Racism, specifically, is the state-sanctioned or extralegal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death. — Ruth Wilson

The State, completely in its genesis, essentially and almost completely during the first stages of its existence, is a social institution, forced by a victorious group of men on a defeated group, with the sole purpose of regulating the dominion of the victorious group over the vanquished, and securing itself against revolt from within and attacks from abroad. Teleologically, this dominion had no other purpose than the economic exploitation of the vanquished by the victors. — Franz Oppenheimer

The measures of the reformers took no account of all this which seemed to me so obvious. The reformers themselves apparently did not see that the State, as an arbiter of economic advantage, must necessarily be a potential instrument of economic exploitation. In fact, these are but two ways of saying the same thing, for, as Voltaire saw so clearly, advantage to the State's beneficiaries means disadvantage to those who are not its beneficiaries. By putting a tariff on steel, for example, the State simply took a great deal of money out of the pockets of American purchasers of steel, and put it in Mr. Carnegie's; it acted ad hoc as Mr. Carnegie's instrument of exploitation. Neither — Albert Jay Nock

The State did not originate in any form of social agreement, or with any disinterested view of promoting order and justice. Far otherwise. The State originated in conquest and confiscation, as a device for maintaining the stratification of society permanently into two classes-an owning and exploiting class, relatively small, and a propertyless dependent class ... No State known to history originated in any other manner, or for any other purpose than to enable the continuous economic exploitation of one class by another. — Albert J. Nock

Society is a voluntary scheme of mutual benefit. The state is a compulsory scheme of mutual exploitation. — Jakub Bozydar Wisniewski

5Our standard of living, our very survival here, is based upon raw exploitation of working-class women - white black, and third world - in all parts of the world. Our hands are not clean. We must also come to terms with the that still largely unexamined, undisclosed faith in the idea of America, that no matter how unbearable it is here, it is better than anywhere else; that's slippage between third world and third rate. We eat bananas. Buy flowers. Use salt to flavour our food. Drink sweetened coffee. Use tires for the cars we drive. Depend upon state-of-the-art electronics. Travel. We consume and rely upon multiple choice to reify consumption. All those things that give material weight to idea of America - conflating capitalism and democracy, demarcating 'us' from 'them'. — M. Jacqui Alexander

Now smiling had been something almost alien to me just a few weeks ago. But over this short period of time, I had rediscovered this art thanks to that noble emotion of love. Joy that had been bottled up inside since childhood now overcame me from deep within just like the healing water reaching folks at hot springs from regions deep below the surface. — Vivek Pereira

But Empire building also bears the seeds of its own destruction. The closer a state comes to the ultimate goal of world domination and one-world government, the less reason is there to maintain its internal liberalism and do instead what all states are inclined to do anyway, i.e., to crack down and increase their exploitation of whatever productive people are still left. Consequently, with no additional tributaries available and domestic productivity stagnating or falling, the Empire's internal policies of bread and circuses can no longer be maintained. Economic crisis hits, and an impending economic meltdown will stimulate decentralizing tendencies, separatist and secessionist movements, and lead to the break-up of Empire. We have seen this happen with Great Britain, and we are seeing it now, with the US and its Empire apparently on its last leg. — Hans-Hermann Hoppe

My parents often wondered why I would grow so indignant at the falsification and exploitation of the Nazi genocide. The most obvious answer is that it has been used to justify criminal policies of the Israeli state and US support for these policies. — Norman G. Finkelstein

One commonly hears that carping critics complain about what is wrong, but do not present solutions. There is an accurate translation for that charge: 'They present solutions, but I don't like them. — Noam Chomsky

I was afraid that I had made a profound, irrevocable mistake, and that, as in a fantastic tale, if I did not find something firm and magical to grab a hold of right that moment we would both be swallowed up by a noisome gang of black shapes and evil black birds. — Michael Chabon

Oppenheimer, The State, p. 15: What, then, is the State as a sociological concept? The State, completely in its genesis ... is a social institution, forced by a victorious group of men on a defeated group, with the sole purpose of regulating the dominion of the victorious group of men on a defeated group, and securing itself against revolt from within and attacks from abroad. Teleologically, this dominion had no other purpose than the economic exploitation of the vanquished by the victors. And — Murray N. Rothbard

The traditional, correct pre-Marxist view on exploitation was that of radical laissez-faire liberalism as espoused by, for instance, Charles Comte and Charles Dunoyer. According to them, antagonistic interests do not exist between capitalists, as owners of factors of production, and laborers, but between, on the one hand, the producers in society, i.e., homesteaders, producers and contractors, including businessmen as well as workers, and on the other hand, those who acquire wealth non-productively and/or non-contractually, i.e., the state and state-privileged groups, such as feudal landlords. — Hans-Hermann Hoppe

For years, President Obama and his top officials vehemently denounced China for using its surveillance capabilities for economic advantage while insisting that the United States and its allies never do any such thing. The Washington Post quoted an NSA spokesperson saying that the Department of Defense, of which the agency is a part, " 'does engage' in computer network exploitation," but "does ***not*** engage in economic espionage in any domain, including 'cyber' " [emphatic asterisks in the original]. That the NSA spies for precisely the economic motive it has denied is proven by its own documents. The agency acts for the benefit of what it calls its "customers," a list that includes not only the White House, the State Department, and the CIA, but also primarily economic agencies, such as the US Trade Representative and the Departments of Agriculture, Treasury, and Commerce: — Glenn Greenwald

If we look at the black record of mass murder, exploitation, and tyranny levied on society by governments over the ages, we need not be loath to abandon the Leviathan State and ... try freedom. — Murray Rothbard