Slave Morality Quotes

While every aristocratic morality springs from a triumphant affirmation of its own demands, the slave morality says "no" from the very outset to what is "outside itself," "different from itself," and "not itself: and this "no" is its creative deed. This ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

While every noble morality develops from a triumphant affirmation of itself, slave morality from the outset says No to what is "outside," what is "different," what is "not itself"; and this No is its creative deed. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Dostoevsky preaches the morality of the pariah, the morality of the slave. ~ Georg Brandes

To be incapable of taking one's enemies, one's accidents, even one's misdeeds seriously for very long - that is the sign of strong, full natures in whom there is an excess of the power to form, to mold, to recuperate and to forget (a good example of this in modem times is Mirabeau, who had no memory for insults and vile actions done him and was unable to forgive simply because he - forgot). Such a man shakes off with a single shrug many vermin that eat deep into others; here alone genuine 'love of one's enemies' is possible - supposing it to be possible at all on earth. How much reverence has a noble man for his enemies! - and such reverence is a bridge to love. - For he desires his enemy for himself, as his mark of distinction; he can endure no other enemy than one in whom there is nothing to despise and very much to honor! In contrast to this, picture 'the enemy' as the man of ressentiment conceives him - and here precisely is his deed, his creation: he has conceived 'the evil enemy,' 'the Evil One,' and this in fact is his basic concept, from which he then evolves, as an afterthought and pendant, a 'good one' - himself! ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Another root of our malady is our loss of the sense of the worth and dignity of the human being. Nietzsche predicted this when he pointed out that the individual was being swallowed up in the herd, and that we were living by a "slave-morality." Marx also predicted it when he proclaimed that modern man was being "de-humanized," and Kafka showed in his amazing stories how people literally can lose their identity as persons. ~ Rollo May

What [Nietzsche] calls slave morality is to him purely spite-morality; and this spite-morality gave new names to all ideals. Thus impotence, which offers no reprisal, became goodness; craven baseness became humility; submission to him who was feared became obedience; inability to assert one's self became reluctance to assert one's self, became forgiveness, love of one's enemies. Misery became a distinction ~ Georg Brandes

Lacanian theory must be understood as a kind of slave morality. ~ Judith Butler

Rand, Huxley, Orwell, and Bradbury foresaw much of today's dystopian world: its spiritual and moral emptiness, its culture of consumerism, its flat-souled Last Manishness, its debasement of language, its doublethink, its illiteracy, and its bovine tolerance of authoritarian indignities. But they did not foresee the most serious and catastrophic of today's problems: the eminent destruction of whites, and western culture.

None of them thought to deal with race at all. Why is this? Probably for the simple reason that it never occurred to any of them that whites might take slave morality so far as to actually will their own destruction. As always, the truth is stranger than fiction. ~ Jef Costello

Master-morality and Slave-morality. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Am I a good person? Deep down, do I even really want to be a good person, or do I only want to seem like a good person so that people (including myself) will approve of me? Is there a difference? How do I ever actually know whether I'm bullshitting myself, morally speaking? ~ David Foster Wallace

Will mankind never learn that policy is not morality,
that it never secures any moral right, but considers merely what is expedient? chooses the available candidate,
who is invariably the devil,
and what right have his constituents to be surprised, because the devil does not behave like an angel of light? What is wanted is men, not of policy, but of probity,
who recognize a higher law than the Constitution, or the decision of the majority. ~ Henry David Thoreau

If you live long enough there's no line that you won't cross. ~ Tracy Manaster

At Chicago I read again 'Philip Van Artevelde,' and certain passages in it will always be in my mind associated with the deep sound of the lake, as heard in the night. I used to read a short time at night, and then open the blind to look out. The moon would be full upon the lake, and the calm breath, pure light, and the deep voice, harmonized well with the thought of the Flemish hero. When will this country have such a man ? It is what she needs - no thin Idealist, no coarse Realist, but a man whose eye reads the heavens while his feet step firmly on the ground and his hands are strong and dextrous in the use of human instruments. A man, religious, virtuous and - sagacious; a man of universal sympathies, but self-possessed; a man who knows the region of emotion, though he is not its slave; a man to whom this world is no mere spectacle or fleeting shadow, but a great, solemn game, to be played with good heed, for its stakes are of eternal value, yet who, if his own play be true, heeds not what he loses by the falsehood of others. A man who lives from the past, yet knows that its honey can but moderately avail him; whose comprehensive eye scans the present, neither infatuated by its golden lures nor chilled by its many ventures; who possesses prescience, as the wise man must, but not so far as to be driven mad to-day by the gift which discerns to-morrow. When there is such a man for America, the thought which urges her on will be expressed. ~ Margaret Fuller

Nonviolence is not sterile passivity, but a powerful moral force which makes for social transformation. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

By going deeper into myth, I go deeper into love, and when I go deeper into love, innately I find morality; I locate a True North in my own heart. ~ Martin Shaw

If I had my way, any man guilty of golf would be barred from any public office in the United States and the families of the breed would be shipped off to the white slave corrals of Argentina. ~ H.L. Mencken

The health of a community is an almost unfailing index of its morals. ~ James Martineau

That's because you're a highly moral person. I'm not. I don't judge, not even myself. ~ Philip K. Dick

People today will have you believing life is a blank slate upon which you can write anything at all
this is poetic, even romantic. Unfortunately, it's also a lie, because life exists in, is bound by, shaped by, controlled by, and functions within a construct. Attempt to function outside that construct, or bend it to our will, or remove it completely, and you throw all of society into chaos. We're seeing that now.
Like it or not, birds don't fly upside down ... and neither can we. ~ Northern Adams

Children by the Nazi forces, for slave labor ~ Edith Hahn Beer

My horses are my friends, not my slaves. ~ Reiner Klimke

Everything is a slave of something else: Clouds, of the winds; men, of the desires; universe, of the chaos; shadows, of the light. ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his. ~ Helen Keller

Ah! In fact there are two moralities ... The petty one, the conventional one, the one devised by men, that keeps changing and bellows so loudly, making a commotion down here among us, in a perfectly pedestrian way ... But the other one, the eternal one, is all around and above us, like a landscape that surrounds us and the blue sky that gives us light. ~ Gustave Flaubert

In the end what separates a man from a slave? Money? Power? No, a man chooses ... a slave obeys. ~ Ken Levine

I never did, or countenanced, in public life, a single act inconsistent with the strictest good faith; having never believed there was one code of morality for a public, and another for a private man. ~ Thomas Jefferson

And a respectable man must be a coward and a slave not only at the present time, owing to some accidental circumstances, but generally in all periods of time. That's a law of nature for all respectable people on earth. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Those who think religion has nothing to do with politics understand neither religion or politics ... The things that will destroy us are: politics without principles, pleasures without conscience, knowledge without character, business without morality. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

There cannot possibly be any solidly grounded hope of a genuine revival of godliness among believers and of morality among unbelievers until the Ten Commandments are again given their proper place in our affections, thoughts, and lives. ~ Arthur W. Pink

The genius of any slave system is found in the dynamics which isolate slaves from each other, obscure the reality of a common condition, and make united rebellion against the oppressor inconceivable. ~ Andrea Dworkin

The old tyrants invoked the past; the new tyrants will invoke the future evolution has produced the snail and the owl; evolution can produce a workman who wants no more space than a snail, and no more light than an owl. The employer need not mind sending a Kaffir to work underground; he will soon become an underground animal, like a mole. He need not mind sending a diver to hold his breath in the deep seas; he will soon be a deep-sea animal. Men need not trouble to alter conditions, conditions will so soon alter men. The head can be beaten small enough to fit the hat. Do not knock the fetters off the slave; knock the slave until he forgets the fetters. ~ G.K. Chesterton

It did not take Bunch very long, amid the politicking and the revelry, to discover the darker side of life in Charleston's homes. "The frightful atrocities of slaveholding must be seen to be described," he wrote in a private letter that wound up prominently positioned in the official slave-trade correspondence of the Foreign Office. "My next-door neighbor, a lawyer of the first distinction and a member of the Southern Aristocracy, told me himself that he flogged all his own people - men and women - when they misbehaved. I hear also that he makes them strip, and after telling them that they were to consider it as a great condescension on his part to touch them, gives them a certain number of lashes with a cow-hide. The frightful evil of the system is that it debases the whole tone of society - for the people talk calmly of horrors which would not be mentioned in civilized society. It is literally no more to kill a slave than to shoot a dog. ~ Christopher Dickey

So maybe the difference isn't language. Maybe it's this: animals do neither good nor evil. They do as they must do. We may call what they do harmful or useful, but good and evil belong to us, who chose to choose what we do. The dragons are dangerous, yes. They can do harm, yes. But they're not evil. They're beneath our morality, if you will, like any animal. Or beyond it. They have nothing to do with it.
We must choose and choose again. The animals need only be and do. We're yoked, and they're free. So to be with an animal is to know a little freedom ... ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

I still had a lot of practical medicine to learn, but would knowledge alone be enough, with life and death hanging in the balance? Surely intelligence wasn't enough; moral clarity was needed as well. Somehow, I had to believe, I would gain not only knowledge but wisdom, too. ~ Paul Kalanithi

She went to him. She adjusted, became a quieter more subdued person. She didn't kill, but she seemed to die a little. ~ Octavia E. Butler

Ultimate prosperity is one's value within. It takes a man of depth, morality, and charm to be envied yet without a sign of wealth or romance. A passion to prove such inner worth is his permission to achieve whatever he desires. ~ Criss Jami

She felt hot tears soaking his shirt as she began to sob. "Forgive you? What king asks forgiveness of a slave?"
"Avin…" he gently pushed her away. "I have wronged you. Terribly."
"Yes," she said sadly. "But we both know it cannot be reversed. Not now. To do so will only throw Windbourne back in turmoil." She wiped away tears with the back of her hand and looked towards the window. "I can no longer love these people after what they did, but I can acknowledge that they have suffered enough. The long winter was not their fault, but neither was the lie that made them angry. And now simple people have been promised a humbled queen, and you must deliver."
He sighed. "It is too much to ask," he said.
"Then don't." Avin gave him the smallest, and saddest of smiles.
"You are the king," she said. "So train me." The tears came then, and she softened in his arms. "Save me, Xander, lest I never feel again."
"I am sorry," he said into her hair. "I am sorry I didn't come. I am sorry I was not the one to kill your father for the hurt he caused you. I am sorry that I caused you even more. I should have known better. I should have never believed the worst." He put his forehead against hers. "Let me make it better, my love. ~ Ava Sinclair

How attraction works, making one's body almost painfully alive and one's thoughts concentrated, also painfully. And the truth of these powerful attractions - they have their own morality and nothing else matters. ~ Elizabeth Hay

The genius of capitalism consists precisely in its lack of morality. Unless he is rich enough to hire his own choir, a capitalist is a fellow who, by definition, can ill afford to believe in anything other than the doctrine of the bottom line. Deprive a capitalist of his God-given right to lie and cheat and steal, and the poor sap stands a better than even chance of becoming one of the abominable wards of the state from whose grimy fingers the Reagan Administration hopes to snatch the ark of democracy. ~ Lewis H. Lapham

Crucial to this is what conservatives see as the essence of America - the Ladder of Success myth. As long as free enterprise flourishes and anyone with enough self-discipline and imagination can become an entrepreneur, the Morality of Reward and Punishment will hold and all will be well. The logic of conservatism locates so-called "social" problems within people, not within society. For this reason, it would make no sense to conservatives to use class and social forces as forms of explanation and justification for social policy. Nature ~ George Lakoff

If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

There were counter-protests, of course, and in the end Mapplethorpe's work was exhibited, but the message to the arts community was clear: stray too far from the innocuous, and the axe would fall. Call it selective censorship: freedom of expression was guaranteed unless it was expressed in a work of art. The most amazing aspect of this American morality play was not that the government would place self-interest above principle when it felt threatened, but that no one foresaw this coming from miles down the road. A reminder from history: the American Revolution was not financed with matching Grants from the Crown. COMMON ~ David Bayles

You're a slave, a bound helpless slave to one thing in this world, your imagination. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

When did it become okay to be more offended by what someone with no power says than by what someone with power does? ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

smile upon him far, far from foemen's power. And Mohammed, thinking to look upon a dying slave, shall ~ Louisa May Alcott

Of course we would all like to "believe" in something, like to assuage our private guilts in public causes, like to lose our tiresome selves; like, perhaps, to transform the white flag of defeat at home into the brave white banner of battle away from home. And of course it is all right to do that; that is how, immemorially, thing have gotten done. But I think it is all right only so long as we do not delude ourselves about what we are doing, and why. It is all right only so long as we remember that all the ad hoc committees, all the picket lines, all the brave signatures in The New York Times, all the tools of agitprop straight across the spectrum, do not confer upon anyone any ipso facto virtue. It is all right only so long as we recognize that the end may or may not be expedient, may or may not be a good idea, but in any case has nothing to do with "morality." Because when we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something or need something, not that it is a pragmatic necessity for us to have it, but that it is a moral imperative that we have it, then is when we join the fashionable madmen, and then is when the thin whine of hysteria is heard in the land, and then is when we are in bad trouble. And I suspect we are already there. ~ Joan Didion

To many people today, however, rights are something to protect us against the demands of morality. ~ J. Budziszewski

To have been part of a Pharaonic slave system that had at its apex a divine sun king led him to understand unreality as the greatest force in life. And his life was now, he felt, one monumental unreality, in which everything that did not matter - professional ambitions, the private pursuit of status, the colour of wallpaper, the size of an office or the matter of a dedicated car parking space - was vested with the greatest significance, and everything that did matter - pleasure, joy, friendship, love - was deemed somehow peripheral. It made for dullness mostly and weirdness generally. ~ Richard Flanagan