Isaac Asimov Quotes

Sometimes I think the world is divided into those who have a comfortable relationship with power and those who have a naturally adversarial relationship with power.

The feeling of being an underdog, not belonging, is very much me. You harbour a little feeling of resentment towards the 'upper dog'.

One of the very basic ideas of Post-Modernism is rejection of arbitrary power structures. Different people are sensitive to different kinds of power structures.

The people who exercise the power are not always the same people over whom it is exercised.

How many, even of the better sort, would choose to be slaves to those above them, provided they might exercise an arbitrary and tyrannical rule over all below them?

Everyone may be called "comrade," but some comrades have the power of life and death over other comrades.

Good masters generally have bad slaves, and bad slaves have good masters.

The strong man wants to be allowed to DO; the little man wants to stop him.

A deck of cards is built like the purest of hierarchies, with every card a master to those below it, a lackey to those above it.

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

My instincts are always against people who want to fasten some sort of hegemony onto things.

Unless one is inordinately fond of subordination, one is always at war.

What we really need to be understanding is that all of these things matter and they all stem from the fact that certain people live with power and authority and they want to maintain it.

If there is a State, then there is domination, and in turn, there is slavery.

One often has need of one, inferior to himself.

The strong do what they have to do and the weak accept what they have to accept.

If we accept the rule of those who think they are the bosses and lords of Mexico, nothing will change for the people on the bottom.

Every man needs slaves like he needs clean air. To rule is to breathe, is it not? And even the most disenfranchised get to breathe. The lowest on the social scale have their spouses or their children.

I remember being taught my place.

Hierarchy is is much reviled in the present day.

The humble are in danger when those in power disagree.

They politics like ours profess, the greater prey upon the less.

Raise your eyes and count the small gang of your oppressors who are only strong through the blood they suck from you and through your arms which you lend them unwillingly.

Oppression that is clearly inexorable and invincible does not give rise to revolt but to submission.

The Danes kept the English in a very degraded position, and often did them dishonor. If 100 English met one Dane, evil arose if they did not bow themselves to him; and if they came upon a bridge, they were required to wait; it was a crime if they moved before the Dane passed. In passing, every one inclined himself; whoever did not, if he was taken was shamelessly beaten. In such vileness were the English, so did the Danes vilify them.