Leo Tolstoy Quotes

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.

This is just what I have thought when I have seen slaves at work - they seem to go through the motions of labor without putting strength into them. They keep their powers in reserve for their own use at night, perhaps.

With the coming of peace, the workers are no longer needed as soldiers; they are no longer comrades, defenders of the fatherland, heroes. Once more they become beasts of burden, objects of exploitation.

You have said that it is me killing you; now here are your masters coming … you will have to pull and shove wagons, but under me you never had to do this kind of thing. Now you be joyful because here are your future rulers.

Among the most oppressive measures, and the ones most deeply harming society, is the compelling of subjects to perform forced work unjustly.

Southern men declare that their slaves are better off than hired laborers amongst us. How little they know, whereof they speak! There is no permanent class of hired laborers amongst us.

I would not have a slave to till my ground, To carry me, to fan me while I sleep, And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth That sinews bought and sold have ever earn'd.

Slavery, you know, is nothing else than the unwilling labor of many. Therefore to get rid of slavery it is necessary that people should not wish to profit by the forced labor of others and should consider it a sin and a shame. But they go and abolish the external form of slavery and arrange so that one can no longer buy and sell slaves, and they imagine and assure themselves that slavery no longer exists, and do not see or wish to see that it does, because people still want and consider it good and right to exploit the labor of others.

As for slavery, there is no need for me to speak of its bad aspects. The only thing requiring explanation is the good side of slavery. I do not mean indirect slavery, the slavery of proletariat; I mean direct slavery, the slavery of the Blacks in Surinam, in Brazil, in the southern regions of North America. Direct slavery is as much the pivot upon which our present-day industrialism turns as are machinery, credit, etc. … Slavery is therefore an economic category of paramount importance.

In war, the strong make slaves of the weak, and in peace the rich makes slaves of the poor.

Any unarmed people are slaves, or are subject to slavery at any given moment.

Slavery is malignantly aristocratic.

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.

They say the Pharaohs built the pyramids Do you think one Pharaoh dropped one bead of sweat? We built the pyramids for the Pharaohs and we're building for them yet.

The first, and overarching, count in the new indictment is that slavery permitted one group of people to exercise unrestrained personal domination over another group of people.

People can be slave-ships in shoes.

Africa suffered under European dominance for centuries.

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

Poverty is slavery.

The worker is always in the sun while the landowner is always in the shade.

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

Our slaves are happy and contented. They bear the kindest relation that labor can sustain to capital.

That’s a slave talking.

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.

There are no limits to which powers of privilege will not go to keep the workers in slavery.