Servility Quotes - Page 2

You see, my good friend, how much we are the creatures of situation and circumstance, and with what pliant servility the mind resigns itself to the impressions of the senses, or the illusions of the imagination

Sydney, Lady Morgan

Good Friend, Imagination, Mind

Lady Morgan (Sydney) (1808). “The wild Irish girl: a national tale”, p.58

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He who does most to cure woman of her weakness, her frivolity, and her servility will likewise at the same stroke do most to cure man of his brutality, his selfishness and his sensuality.

Frances Power Cobbe

Men, Selfishness, Weakness

Frances Power Cobbe (2010). “The Duties of Women: A Course of Lectures”, p.36, Cambridge University Press

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Everywhere, giant finned cars nose forward like fish; a savage servility slides by on grease.

Robert Lowell

Car, Grease, Giants

"For the Union Dead" l. 65 (1964)

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We are aware that the order of God requires the exercise of humility, but not of servility of slaves; but a humility that can be associated with undoubted courage and unflinching integrity; at the same time there is no room for pride, self-sufficient pride, that rests solely upon its own capabilities, and refuses to look for the support and countenance of others.--MS 7:91 [MS is the Millenial Star]

John Andreas Widtsoe

Stars, Integrity, Humility

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When society is made up of men who know no interior solitude it can no longer be held together by love: and consequently it is held together by a violent and abusive authority. But when men are violently deprived of the solitude and freedom which are their due, then society in which they live becomes putrid, it festers with servility, resentment and hate.

Thomas Merton

Wisdom, Hate, Men

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The self-discipline of the Social Democracy is not merely the replacement of the authority of bourgeois rulers with the authority of a socialist central committee. The working class will acquire the sense of the new discipline, the freely assumed self-discipline of the Social Democracy, not as a result of the discipline imposed on it by the capitalist state, but by extirpating, to the last root, its old habits of obedience and servility.

Rosa Luxemburg

Self, Class, Roots

"Revolutionary Socialist Organization". Book by Rosa Luxemburg, www.marxists.org. 1934.

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In this hour I would ask of the Lord God only this: that, as in the past, so in the years to come He would give His blessing to our work and our action, to our judgement and our resolution, that He will safeguard us from all false pride and from all cowardly servility, that he may grant to us to find the straight path which His Providence has ordained for the German people, and that he may ever give us the courage to do the right, never to falter, never to yield before any violence, before any danger.

Adolf Hitler

Pride, Past, Blessing

Adolf Hitler (1942). “The Speeches of Adolf Hitler: April 1922-August 1939”

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In spite of what moralists say, the, animals are scarcely less wicked or less unhappy than we are ourselves. The arrogance of the strong, the servility of the weak, low rapacity, ephemeral pleasure purchased by great effort, death preceded by long suffering, all belong to the animals as they do to men.

Georges Cuvier

Death, Strong, Science

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Rules serve no purpose; they can only do harm. Not only must the artist's mind be clear, it must also be free. His fancy should not be hindered and weighed down by a mechanical servility to such rules.

Federico Zuccari

Freedom, Artist, Mind

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Let it be signified to me through any channelthat the possession of the Floridas would be desirable to the United States, andin sixty days it will be accomplished.
...penned in the language of truth, and divested of those expressions of servility which would persuade his majesty that we are asking favors and not rights.

Thomas Jefferson

Florida, Rights, Expression

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That's how the Germans are.... The aristocrats at the top hard as glass, cold as ice, servants of the King, the working masses willing, pliable, sentimental, susceptible to brutality, the middle class educated and cowardly to the point of servility.

Alfred Doblin

Kings, Glasses, Ice

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The politics of courtiers resemble their shadows; they cringe and turn with the sun of the day.

Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

Shadow, Sun, Turns

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O villains, vipers, dogs, easily won to fawn on any man!

William Shakespeare

Dog, Men, Fawns

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Could slavery suggest a more complete servility than some of these journals exhibit? Is there any dust which their conduct does not lick, and make fouler still with its slime?

Henry David Thoreau

Dust, Doe, Slavery

Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.233, Graphic Arts Books

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It is because of the servility of photography that I am fundamentally contemptuous of this chance invention which will never be an art but which plagiarizes nature by means of optics. (1848)

Alphonse de Lamartine

Photography, Art, Mean

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We are hurtling back into a Soviet abyss, into an information vacuum that spells death from our own ignorance. All we have left is the internet, where information is still freely available. For the rest, if you want to go on working as a journalist, it's total servility to Putin. Otherwise, it can be death, the bullet, poison, or trial -whatever our special services, Putin's guard dogs, see fit.

Anna Politkovskaya

Dog, Ignorance, Special

"Poisoned by Putin: The horror of Beslan was made still worse by the intimidation of Russia's servile media". www.theguardian.com. September 9, 2004.

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As not every instance of similitude can be considered as a proof of imitation, so not every imitation ought to be stigmatised as plagiarism. The adoption of a noble sentiment, or the insertion of a borrowed ornament, may sometimes display so much judgment as will almost compensate for invention; and an inferior genius may, without any imputation of servility, pursue the paths of the ancients, provided he declines to tread in their footsteps.

Samuel Johnson

Writing, Adoption, Ornaments

Samuel Johnson (1782). “The Beauties of Johnson: Consisting of Maxims and Observations, Moral, Critical, and Miscellaneous”, p.117

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As it is the nature of a kite to devour little birds, so it is the nature of some minds to insult and tyrannize over little people; this being the means which they use to recompense themselves for their extreme servility and condescension to their superiors; for nothing can be more reasonable than that slaves and flatterers should exact the same taxes on all below them which they themselves pay to all above them.

Henry Fielding

Mean, People, Bird

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May exalting and humanizing thoughts forever accompany me, making me confident without pride, and modest without servility.

Leigh Hunt

Humility, Pride, Forever

Leigh Hunt (1853). “The Religion of the Heart: A Manual of Faith and Duty”, p.9

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The major western democracies are moving towards corporatism. Democracy has become a business plan, with a bottom line for every human activity, every dream, every decency, every hope. The main parliamentary parties are now devoted to the same economic policies - socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor - and the same foreign policy of servility to endless war. This is not democracy. It is to politics what McDonalds is to food.

John Pilger

Dream, War, Party

"Breaking the great Australian silence". John Pilger's speech at the Sydney Opera House to mark his award of the Sydney Peace Prize, johnpilger.com. November 5, 2009.

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I am beginning with the young. We older ones are used up. Yes, we are old already. We are rotten to the marrow. We have no unrestrained instincts left. We are cowardly and sentimental. We are bearing the burden of a humiliating past, and have in our blood the dull recollection of serfdom and servility. But my magnificent youngsters! Are there finer ones anywhere in the world? Look at these young men and boys! What material! With them, I can make a new world.

Adolf Hitler

Boys, Past, Men

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Religion fosters servility and solipsism.

Christopher Hitchens

Religion, Atheism, Solipsism

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Christians believe themselves to be the aristocracy of heaven upon earth, they are admitted to the spiritual court, while millions of men in foreign lands have never been presented. They bow their knees and say they are 'miserable sinners,' and their hearts rankle with abominable pride. Poor infatuated fools! Their servility is real and their insolence is real but their king is a phantom and their palace is a dream.

William Winwood Reade

Christian, Dream, Spiritual

William Winwood Reade (1874). “The Martyrdom of Man”, p.533

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When people complain of the decay of manners they have in mind not the impudent abbreviations of the crowd, but the decline in bowing and scraping and in speaking of one's employer as "the master." What the rich mean by the good manners of the poor is usually not civility, but servility.

Robert Wilson Lynd

Mean, People, Good Man

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The air of fashion, which many young people are so eager to attain, always strikes me like the studied attitudes of some modern prints, copied with tasteless servility after the antigue; the soul is left out, and none of the parts are tied together by what may properly be termed character.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Fashion, Attitude, Character

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