Alice Oswald Quotes

Every organism, every human being, must conquer or serve.

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.

There're two people in the world that are not likeable: a master and a slave.

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.

All authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and it degrades those over whom it is exercised.

I always remember I'm the monkey and he's the organ-grinder.

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

The natural course of power is to make the many slaves to the few.

It is better to be the slave of a master than to be a slave of a slave.

The man who gives me employment, which I must have or suffer, that man is my master, let me call him what I will.

You can be a control freak only when you have weak people around you.

Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves.

Without a Prospero-Caliban relationship to balance the Prospero-Ariel one, 'The Tempest' loses much of its resonance.

The future condition of the conquered power depends on the will of the conquerer.

Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room.

Every country we conquer feeds us. And these are just a few of the good things we'll have when this war is over. Slaves working for us everywhere while we sit back with a fork in our hands and a whip on our knees.

Authority is something from which we are constantly subtracting, of which there remains always a residue, and which we attempt to make smaller and smaller.

And this is the Anarchistic definition of the State: the embodiment of the principle of invasion in an individual, or a band of individuals, assuming to act as representatives or masters of the entire people within a given area.

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.

Any society based on domination supports and condones violence.

Power over others is weakness disguised as strength.

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

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

A people that patiently lets itself be trampled, deserves to be trampled and crushed.

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