A Quote by Oscar Wilde

The fact is, that civilization requires slaves. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture and contemplation become almost impossible.

Oscar Wilde

Quote Topics

Almost Become Civilization Contemplation Culture Fact Horrible Impossible Requires Ugly Uninteresting Unless Work

Quote Author

Oscar Wilde
Irish - Poet
October 16, 1854 - November 30, 1900

We are slaves in the hands of nature - slaves to a bit of bread, slaves to praise, slaves to blame, slaves to wife, to husband, to child, slaves to everything.

Swami Vivekananda

The slaves of developed industrial civilization are sublimated slaves.

Herbert Marcuse

The fact is, that civilization requires slaves. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralizing. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends.

Oscar Wilde

Slaves and the descendants of slaves created world pop culture. Let's keep it real and be very respectful about that.

Fantastic Negrito

Slaves do not always welcome their deliverers. They become accustomed to being slaves. They would rather gear those ills they have

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Freedom means Freedom for the Group, not Freedom for the Individual. (…) Men must not be slaves to other men, but they must be slaves to their group. For, if they are not slaves to their own group, they will assuredly become slaves to some other.

Liang Qichao

We are slaves, all of us...Some are slaves to fear. Others are slaves to reason—or base desire. It is our lot to be slaves...and the question must be to what shall we owe our indenture? Will it be to truth or to falsehood, hope or despair, light or darkness? I choose to serve the light, even though that bondage often lies in darkness.

Rick Yancey

They are slaves who fear to speak For the fallen and the weak; They are slaves who will not choose Hatred, scoffing, and abuse, Rather than in silence shrink From the truth they needs must think; They are slaves who dare not be In the right with two or three.

James Russell Lowell

I often compared myself with a slave. Slaves were taken forcibly from Africa, and so was I. Slaves were sold a couple of times on their way to their final destination, and so was I. Slaves suddenly were assigned to somebody they didn't choose, and so was I.

Mohamedou Ould Slahi

...How can Americans living in the freest country in the world be 'slaves'? We don't even enjoy the liberty of serfs. ( A serf paid only 25% of his earnings to his feudal lord. How much income tax do you pay?) Don't kid yourselves, we're slaves. Slaves with weekends off.

Kenneth W. Royce

In war," answered the weaver, "the strong make slaves of the weak, and in peace the rich make slaves of the poor. We must work to live, and they give us such mean wages that we die. We toil for them all day long, and they heap up gold in their coffers, and our children fade away before their time, and the faces of those we love become hard and evil. We tread out the grapes, another drinks the wine. We sow the corn, and our own board is empty. We have chains, though no eye beholds them; and are slaves, though men call us free.

Oscar Wilde

as females in a patriarchal culture, we were not slaves of love; most of us were and are slaves of longing-- yearning for a master who will set us free and claim us because we cannot claim ourselves