#servility

The sovereign being is burdened with a servitude that crushes him, and the condition of free men is deliberate servility. ↗

— Georges Bataille

#burdened #condition #crushes #deliberate #free

It is not serving, but servility, that is menial. ↗

— Hortense Odlum

#servility #serving

By rendering the labor of one, the property of the other, they cherish pride, luxury, and vanity on one side; on the other, vice and servility, or hatred and revolt. ↗

— James Madison

#hatred #labor #luxury #other #pride

This business of petty inconvenience and indignity, of being kept waiting about, of having to do everything at other people’s convenience, is inherent in working-class life. A thousand influences constantly press a working man down into a passive role. He does not act, he is acted upon. He feels himself the slave of mysterious authority and has a firm conviction that ‘they’ will never allow him to do this, that, and the other. Once when I was hop-picking I asked the sweated pickers (they earn something under sixpence an hour) why they did not form a union. I was told immediately that ‘they’ would never allow it. Who were ‘they’? I asked. Nobody seemed to know, but evidently ‘they’ were omnipotent. ↗

— George Orwell

#labour #servility #trade-unions #wage-labour #working-class

I think that knowledge enslaves us, that at the base of all knowledge there is a servility, the acceptation of a way of life wherein each moment has meaning only in relation to another or others that will follow it. ↗

— Georges Bataille

#servility #life

A free life cannot acquire many possessions, because this is not easy to do without servility to mobs or monarchs. ↗

— Epicurus

#because #cannot #easy #free #free life

The intellectual tradition is one of servility to power, and if I didn't betray it I'd be ashamed of myself. ↗

— Noam Chomsky

#betray #i #intellectual #myself #power