Julius Martov Quotes

…to make a commonwealth is to divide it into parties, which setteth them at perpetual variance, the one party endeavouring to preserve their eminence and inequality, and the other to attain their equality.

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

The primary object of every elite, or ruling class, is to maintain its own power and privilege.

The return to collegiate management of finance would bring with it the continued domination of a minority over the majority, with no possibility of setting matters aright without recourse to revolutions provoked by feebleness, feuds, factions, hatreds, and vindictiveness…

However democratic and egalitarian we kid ourselves into thinking society might be, I think that sense of entitlement operates as basically and viciously as it always did.

What we really need to be understanding is that all of these things matter and they all stem from the fact that certain people live with power and authority and they want to maintain it.

As equality increases, so does the number of people struggling for predominance.

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

This world is run by people who know how to do things. They know how things work. They are equipped. Up there, there's a layer of people who run everything. But we - we're just peasants. We don't understand what's going on, and we can't do anything.

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.

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.

Civilization degrades the many to exalt the few

This is a hard job to do …. We represent the underdog, and that makes the top dogs angry.

The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.

Was there ever any domination which did not appear natural to those who possessed it?

White men have too many chiefs.

However sugarcoated and ambiguous, every form of authoritarianism must start with a belief in some group's greater right to power, whether that right is justified by sex, race, class, religion or all four.

In the beginning, all men were alike and they lived in peace and they shared among them what they had. But now there are two kinds of men, the master and the slave. But there are more of us than there are of you, many more. And we are stronger than you, better than you. All that is good in mankind belongs to us.

… in the old days there were one thousand castes and destinies in India. These days, there are just two castes: Men with Big Bellies and Men with Small Bellies. And only two destinies: eat – or get eaten up

As the oppressor minority subordinates and dominates the majority, it must divide it and keep it divided in order to remain in power.

I represent both the underdog and the overdog in our society.

Disrespect is the weapon of the weak

The world belongs to those who possess it, and is scorned by those to whom it should belong.

Some is more equal than others, as is well known. It ain't that your majority is outnumbered, you're just out-surrounded.

The ruling class is smarter than you, and they're more creative. And if you forget that lesson, you go down the drain. Because if they weren't, they wouldn't be around as long as they have been and as strong as they have been.