Fyodor Dostoevsky Quotes

Slavery, properly so called, is the establishment of a right which gives to one man such a power over another as renders him absolute master of his life and fortune.

Slavery takes hold of few, but many take hold of slavery.

People can be slave-ships in shoes.

Slavery is the rule. Freedom the exception.

The slave child had no thought for the morrow; but there came that blight, which too surely waits on every human being born to be a chattel.

However you disguise slavery, it is slavery still. Its chains, though wreathed with roses, not only fasten on the body but rivet on the mind.

We've got some new ways to make slaves here.

We are the slaves of slaves

There are a few men whom slavery holds fast, but there are many more who hold fast to slavery.

A well-paid slave is nonetheless a slave.

Poverty and slavery are thus only two forms ofthe same thing, the essence of which is that a man's energies are expended for the most part not on his own behalf but on that of others.

That slow poison [slavery] is daily contaminating the minds and morals of our people. Every gentlemen here is born a petty tyrant, practiced in acts of despotism and cruelty.

In part because they had no choice, right? If you were a slave, you did what the master said. And they said to worship: "You're going to worship with us."

This is what it means to be a slave; to be abused and bear it; compelled by violence to suffer wrong.

In the last camp they all ate grass, until the authorities forbade them to pull it up. They were accustomed to having the fruits of their little communal gardens stolen by the guards, after they had done all the work; but at the last camp everything was stolen.

A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him.

Slavery was not a bad day on the job. It was not your boss yelling at you. It was not hard work for little pay. This was a full system of human subjugation.

Now a slave is not 'held' by any legal contract, obligation, duty, or authority, which the laws will enforce. He is 'held' only by brute force. One person beats another until the latter will obey him, work for him, if he require it, or do nothing if he require it.

They would make fine servants .... With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.

Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage and you prepare your own limbs to wear them.

The masses in this country [Spain] are not like your Americans, nor even like the British. They are slave stock. They are good for nothing but slaves and only when they are used as slaves are they happy.

Would you rather lead an army of slaves?

A man is none the less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years.

I think enslavement has evolved to what may seem appropriate to this day's generation. Modern enslavement is imprisonment.

Slavery doesn't have any positives.