Jeremy Bentham Quotes

It has always been the aim of royalty and aristocracy to lower the individual liberty and independence of the common people. A baron and a minute-man could not breathe the same air.

Some people are by nature slaves and will always be so.

It is bad to have a servant, but worse to have a master.

Inequality of rights and power proceeds from the very Author of nature, from whom all paternity in heaven and earth is named.

The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must

Among human beings, the subjection of women is much more complete at a certain level of civilization than it is among savages. And the subjection is always reinforced by morality.

It is doubtful if the oppressed ever fight for freedom. They fight for pride and power — power to oppress others. The oppressed want above all to imitate their oppressors; they want to retaliate.

All mankind is divided, as it was at all times and is still, into slaves and freemen.

Slavery it is that makes slavery; freedom, freedom. The slavery of women happened when the men were slaves of kings.

Aristocracy is always cruel.

In most of Pakistan it is a feudal country. People are very scared and oppressed by authority. But when you move to these wilder areas, they are not so easily suppressed.

Only a minority of science fiction dystopias attempt to plumb the real existential roots of oppression, the flaws in humanity's nature that undermine our best attempts at organizing ourselves into social units.

The individual mirrors in his individuation the preordained social laws of exploitation, however mediated.

The oppressed never free themselves - they do not have the necessary strengths.

When an individual is kept in a situation of inferiority, the fact is that he does become inferior.

The truth is that men are tired of liberty.

The submission of her body without love or desire is degrading to the woman's finer sensibility, all the marriage certificates on earth to the contrary notwithstanding.

The tyrant grinds down his slaves and they don't turn against him, they crush those beneath them.

The web of domination has become the web of Reason itself, and this society is fatally entangled in it.

Neither can men, by the same principles, be considered as lands, goods, or houses, among possessions. It is necessary that all property should be inferiour to its possessor. But how does the slave differ from his master, but by chance?

The breath of an aristocrat is the death rattle of freedom.

I think I've always had a certain amount of skepticism of this whole 'shut up and smile' theory. I haven't ever swallowed that pill so easily, although I tried.

Women in most countries have not achieved much, because they can't be liberated under the patriarchal, capitalist, imperialist and military system that determines the way we live now, and which is governed by power, not justice, by false democracy, not real freedom.

Deny human rights, and however little you may wish to do so, you will find yourself abjectly kneeling at the feet of that old-world god, Force.

I can't imagine what it is like to be raised in a society where their only statues that exist are to you and your father.