Alexander Herzen Quotes

In the history of the world, slavery has been and still is the normal condition of most men; all the great accumulations of property have been the result of slavery, and civilization was the result of property…. art, literature, science, architecture, beautiful women, and gentlemen of leisure all depend upon the forced labor of masses of ignorant men whom to make free would be a social crime.

In a nation run by swine, all pigs are upward-mobile and the rest of us are fucked until we can put our acts together.

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

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

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.

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.

the plain fact that throughout the world today organized groups of men by monopoly of economic and physical power, legal enactment and intellectual training are limiting with determination and unflagging zeal the development of other groups; and that the concentration of particularly economic power today puts the majority of mankind into slavery to the rest. But one thing is sure and that is that these ancestors of mine and their descendants have had a common history; have suffered a common disaster and have one long memory.

Aristocracy is always cruel.

Civilization degrades the many to exalt the few

The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose; while the subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose, especially their lives.

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

There is not a respectable system of civilization known to history whose foundations were not laid in the institution of domestic slavery.

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.

The blunting effects of slavery upon the slaveholder's moral perceptions are known and conceded the world over; and a privileged class, an aristocracy, is but a band of slaveholders under another name.

It is always the right of the mighty which prevails over the weak, and that is very primitive.

Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.

I think that children are acutely sensitive to injustice because they live in a world that is absolutely filled with injustice. They have very, very little power, and they are extremely aware of power relations.

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

What slavery really demonstrated was that we don't really know how to use energy wisely and that we can be incredibly abusive and barbaric.

The world is an enormous injustice.

The poor despise labor when performed by slaves.

To be a slaveholder meant one had to regard the African American as inferior in every way.

As there is oppression of the majority such oppression will be fought with increasing hatred.

The margins don't get erased by simply insisting that the powers-that-be erase them.

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