Robert Sapolsky Quotes

When humans invented inequality and socioeconomic status, they came up with a dominance hierarchy that subordinates like nothing the primate world has ever seen before.

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

Civilization is based on a clearly defined and widely accepted yet often unarticulated hierarchy. Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower is nearly always invisible, that is, unnoticed. When it is noticed, it is fully rationalized. Violence done by those lower on the hierarchy to those higher is unthinkable, and when it does occur is regarded with shock, horror, and the fetishization of the victims.

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.

When an individual is kept in a situation of inferiority, the fact is that he does become inferior.

What you're saying is that 'I, the superior elite, will take care of you.' Why? Because, you see, that superior, elite group needs to feel superior and elite. And they can't be superior and elite unless you have a whole lot of people down there groveling around. So you keep them down there by feeding them.

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

The sharecropper may lower his eyes, but not because he's less of a man. That's just a condition of society that such things exist.

Oppression is more easily endured than insult.

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

Through the history of the world there have always been exploiters and exploited. There always will be ... because the great mass of men are made by nature to be slaves, they are unfit to control themselves, and for their own good need masters.

White men have too many chiefs.

Sex and race, because they are easy, visible differences, have been the primary ways of organizing human beings into superior and inferior groups, and into the cheap labor on which this system still depends.

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

I'm drawn to the figure of the ungrateful subaltern as a trope in literature. In real life, it is often dangerous to demand more.

Whatever a 'superior' group has will be used to justify its superiority, and whatever an 'inferior' group has will be used to justify its plight. Black men were given poorly paid jobs because they were said to be 'stronger' than white men, while all women were relegated to poorly paid jobs because they were said to be 'weaker.

No privileged order ever did see the wrongs of its own victims.

The individual mirrors in his individuation the preordained social laws of exploitation, however mediated.

In a change of masters the poor change nothing except their master's name.

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.

Unrestrained liberalism only makes the strong stronger and the weak weaker and excludes the most excluded.

In poor countries, the rich and powerful crush the poor and powerless.

When you use the term minority or minorities in reference to people, you're telling them that they're less than somebody else.

I'm the result of upbringing, class, race, gender, social prejudices, and economics. So I'm a victim again. A result.

We have two evils to fight, capitalism and racism. We must destroy both racism and capitalism.