James Agee Quotes

My advisers built a wall between myself and my people. I didn't realize what was happening. When I woke up, I had lost my people.

How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!

Give a man a free hand and he'll try to put it all over you.

Power over others is weakness disguised as strength.

Call someone your lord and he'll sell you in the slave market.

Conquerors always call themselves liberators.

After taking advantage of the weakness, the credulity and the ignorance of the weakest and the most ignorant of the people, those sly, cunning politicians easily had them believe whatever they wanted. Consequently, they made them accept with respect and submission, willingly or not, all the laws they wanted to establish.

I hated how Sam Rothstein got manipulated by Sharon Stone's character in 'Casino.' I mean, I just hate how he gets manipulated; that just gets ridiculous to me. I know it's historic, but I hated that.

I have discovered that a famed familiarity in great ones is a note of certain usurpation on the less; for great and popular men feign themselves to be servants to others to make those slaves to them.

Kings do with men as with pieces of money; they give them what value they please, and we are obliged to receive them at their current and not at their real value.

Do you take me for a sponge, my lord? hamlet: Ay, sir; that soaks up the king's countenance, his rewards, his authorities. But such officers do the king best service in the end: he keeps them, like an ape, in the corner of his jaw; first mouthed, to be last swallowed: when he needs what you have gleaned, it is but squeezing you, and, sponge, you shall be dry again. rosencrantz: I understand you not, my lord. hamlet: I am glad of it: a knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear.

There's strong men of wisdom in many different fields. They say 5% of the people are wise and righteous and 10% are wise but use their wiseness for wickedness or to deceive others. It's like a magician: he knows the answer to the trick, but you don't. He has to keep you blind to the truth in order for the illusion to work. When you've got that kind of wisdom and somebody else doesn't, you can always take advantage of them.

A veritable incubator of short cuts, schemes and devices to overcome the truth.

In my opinion and experience, imperialists of all nations and races will tell us anything to keep us fighting. For them.

There is a social contract in "Fight Club" and in "Choke" where the protagonist has deceived a whole bunch of people. In "Choke" it's all of these people who think that they've saved his life, and really care about him because they've embraced him and they've been his saviors. In "Fight Club" it's all of these people who are dying of various diseases, and they thought that Edward Norton was also dying so they allowed him really strong pent-up emotions.

The oppressor has always indoctrinated the weak with his interpretation of the crimes of the strong.

If you get deep enough, you get trapped. Stop calling yourself a user. You are being used.

Never give us what we really want. Cut the dream into pieces and scatter them like ashes. Dole out the empty promises. Package our aspirations and sell them to us, cheaply made enough to fall apart.

So each man, like each plant, has his parasites. A strong, astringent, bilious nature has more truculent enemies than the slugs and moths that fret my leaves. Such a one has curculios, borers, knife-worms; a swindler ate him first, then a client, then a quack, then smooth, plausible gentlemen, bitter and selfish as Moloch.

Another way of verbally masking elite preemption of other people’s decisions is to use the word “ask”—as in “We are just asking everyone to pay their fair share.” But of course governments do not ask, they tell. The Internal Revenue Service does not “ask” for contributions. It takes.

A good prayer is master of anothers purse.

Knaves starve not in the land of fools.

Tyranny brings ignorance and brutality with it. It degrades men from their just rank into the class of brutes; it damps their spirits; it suppresses art; it extinguishes every spark of noble ardor and generosity in the breasts of those who are enslaved by it; it makes naturally strong and great minds feeble and little, and triumphs over the ruins of virtue and humanity.