Leo Tolstoy Quotes

Aristocracy is always cruel.

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

Among those who dislike oppression are many who like to oppress

… egotists, exploiters and aristocrats

Hell hath no fury like a vested interest masquerading as a moral principle.

When we were the political slaves of King George, and wanted to be free, we called the maxim that "all men are created equal" a self-evident truth; but now when we have grown fat, and have lost all dread of being slaves ourselves, we have become so greedy to be masters that we call the same maxim "a self evident lie.

Managers can sometimes hold players back for their own benefit.

Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners.

The world is not fair, and often fools, cowards, liars and the selfish hide in high places.

Most men today cannot conceive of a freedom that does not involve somebody's slavery.

Human beings may well be unable to break free of the dictatorship of greed that spreads like a miasma over the world, but no longer will we be an inarticulate and ignorant humanity, confused by our enslavement to superior cruelty and weaponry.

It is a clear truth that those who every day barter away other men's liberty will soon care little for their own.

You stand with the least likely to succeed until success is succeeded by something more valuable: kinship. You stand with the belligerent, the surly and the badly behaved until bad behavior is recognized for the language it is: the vocabulary of the deeply wounded and of those whose burdens are more than they can bear.

The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves.

If most people are not willing to see the difficulty, this is mainly because, consciously or unconsciously, they assume that it will be they who will settle these questions for the others, and because they are convinced of their own capacity to do this.

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

The genius of any slave system is found in the dynamics which isolate slaves from each other, obscure the reality of a common condition, and make united rebellion against the oppressor inconceivable.

I came to poetry through the urgent need to denounce injustice, exploitation, humiliation. I know that's not enough to change the world. But to remain silent would have been a kind of intolerable complicity.

The feudal concept of self-preservation is poisoned at the core by the virulent assumption of master and man, of potentate and slave, of external and internal suppression of the life urge of the only one - of its faith in human sacrifice as a means of salvation.

Democratic institutions are based on a reality of human nature: that those with power, however benign or even noble their intentions, will do what they can to keep it.

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

Private interests often keep up Customs and Privileges, when the reasons of them are ceased

Man’s freedom is lacking if somebody else controls what he needs, for need may result in man’s enslavement of man..

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.

In Russia bureaucracy as the ruling class is master of production and produce, and the Russian workers are an exploited class.