Michael Pollan Quotes

Generosity and gratitude are inseparably linked.

Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen!

If not for you, winter wouldn't hold no spring, couldn't hear a robin sing. I just wouldn't have a clue, if not for you.

Gratitude is like credit; it is the backbone of our relations; frequently we pay our debts not because equity demands that we should, but to facilitate future loans.

As we depend upon our masters, for what we eat and drink and wear, and for all our comfortable things in this world, we cannot be happy, unless we please them.

If you let other people do it for you, they will do it to you.

Gratitude is a sickness suffered by dogs.

Sooner or later we're all someone's dog.

We want only loyal workers who are grateful from the bottom of their hearts for the bread which we let them earn.

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

He was in charge of everything and I was to be wherever he wasn’t.

Dependence begets subservience and venality.

Power over a man's support is a power over his will.

A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of others.

What would I do without you? You're never going to find out.

Don't let the sun go down without saying thank you to someone, and without admitting to yourself that absolutely no one gets this far alone.

You can maintain power over people, as long as you give them something. Rob a man of everything, and that man will no longer be in your power.

He who acknowledges a kindness has it still, and he who has a grateful sense of it has requited it.

Everything has strings leading to everything else. We're all so tied together. We're all in a net, the net is waiting, and we're pushed into it by one single desire. You want a thing and it's precious to you. Do you know who is standing ready to tear it out of your hands? You can't know, it may be so involved and so far away, but someone is ready, and you're afraid of them all. And you cringe and you crawl and you beg and you accept them--just so they'll let you keep it. And look at whom you come to accept.

Colin Powell's committed to come into the house of the master. When Colin Powell dares to suggest something other than what the master wants to hear, he will be turned back out to pasture.

That god forbid, that made me first your slave, I should in thought control your times of pleasure, Or at your hand th' account of hours to crave, Being your vassal bound to stay your leisure.

Gratitude is a species of justice.

If we meet someone who owes us a debt of gratitude, we remember the fact at once. How often we can meet someone to whom we owe a debt of gratitude without thinking about it at all!

Thank you for your cooperation and vice versa.

He who receives a benefit with gratitude, repays the first installment of it.