Henry Fielding Quotes

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

The poor despise labor when performed by slaves.

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

There is no more contemptible poison than power over one's fellow men.

In the history of the world, slavery has been and still is the normal condition of most men; all the great accumulations of property have been the result of slavery, and civilization was the result of property…. art, literature, science, architecture, beautiful women, and gentlemen of leisure all depend upon the forced labor of masses of ignorant men whom to make free would be a social crime.

There is none to tell the rich to go on striving, for a rich man makes the law that hallows and hollows his own life.

What you're saying is that 'I, the superior elite, will take care of you.' Why? Because, you see, that superior, elite group needs to feel superior and elite. And they can't be superior and elite unless you have a whole lot of people down there groveling around. So you keep them down there by feeding them.

Slavery is the first step towards civilization. In order to develop it is necessary that things should be much better for some and much worse for others, then those who are better off can develop at the expense of others.

I need say no more, to prove that slavery is entirely unlike the servitude in the patriarchal families.

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.

Proclaim human equality as loudly as you like, Witless will serve his brother.

To hold a people in oppression you have to convince them first that they are supposed to be oppressed.

Before passing different laws for different people, I'd relinquish myself unto you as your slave.

He who can be, and therefore is, another's, and he who participates in reason enough to apprehend, but not to have, is a slave by nature.

Oh, yes; you Virginians shed barrels of perspiration while standing off at a distance and superintending the work your slaves do for you. It is different with us. Here it is every fellow for himself, or he doesn't get there.

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

What are your masses [of humanity] but mud to be ground underfoot, fuel to be burned for those who deserve it?

The majority in every society is always the backward. The diligent are no more than thirty percent of the society. It is a natural law that the diligent breed will exploit the backward breed as best they can, like the fish at sea, where the strong eat the weak. It is inconsequential whether the diligent are capitalists and merchants, as in the bourgeois government, or whether the diligent are the managers and supervisors, the intellectuals and the allotters as in the communist government. Ultimately, the diligent will exploit the laboring backward to the best of their ability.

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

The distinctions separating the social classes are false, in the last analysis they rest on force.

A heavy aristocracy and corruption are two bridles in the mouths of a people which will prevent them from making any effectual efforts against their masters.

The worker is always in the sun while the landowner is always in the shade.

Is the great working class oppressed? Yes, undoubtedly it is. God has intended the great to be great and the little to be little.

The defeats and victories for the people at the top aren't defeats and victories for the people at the bottom.

The dearest ambition of a slave is not liberty, but to have a slave of his own.