Subjection Quotes

• Bondage is - subjection to external influences and internal negative thoughts and attitudes.

  W. Clement Stone

  Gratitude, Attitude, Freedom

  20 Copy quote

• The plastic virtues: purity, unity, and truth, keep nature in subjection.

  Guillaume Apollinaire

  Truth, Unity, Purity

  9 Copy quote

• Nature has placed mankind under the government of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure.

  Jeremy Bentham

  Pain, Government, Two

  An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation ch. 1 (1789)

  66 Copy quote

  Show source

• The bible teaches that woman brought sin and death into the world, that she precipitated the fall of the race, that she was arraigned before the judgment seat of Heaven, tried, condemned and sentenced. Marriage for her was to be a condition of bondage, maternity a period of suffering and anguish, and in silence and subjection, she was to play the role of a dependent on man's bounty for all her material wants, and for all the information she might desire...Here is the bible position of woman briefly summed up.

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton

  Fall, Men, Race

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton (2012). “The Woman's Bible: A Classic Feminist Perspective”, p.7, Courier Corporation

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• Bound to seek recognition of its own existence in categories, terms, and names that are not of its own making, the subject seeks the sign of its own existence outside itself, in a discourse that is at once dominant and indifferent. Social categories signify subordination and existence at once. In other words, within subjection the price of existence is subordination.

  Judith Butler

  Names, Recognition, Social

  Judith Butler (1997). “The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection”, p.20, Stanford University Press

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• The three great problems of this century; the degradation of man in the proletariat, the subjection of women through hunger, the atrophy of the child by darkness.

  Victor Hugo

  Children, Men, Darkness

  Victor Hugo (1980). “Les misérables”, Viking Pr

  36 Copy quote

  Show source

• There never was a strong character that was not made strong by discipline of the will; there never was a strong people that did not rank subordination and discipline among the signal virtues. Subjection to moods is the mark of a deteriorating morality. There is no baser servitude than that of the man whose caprices are his masters, and a nation composed of such men could not long preserve its liberties.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Strong, Character, Men

  7 Copy quote

• A man, at least, is free; he can explore every passion, every land, overcome obstacles, taste the most distant pleasures. But a woman is continually thwarted. Inert and pliant at the same time, she must struggle against both the softness of her flesh and subjection to the law. Her will, like the veil tied to her hat by a string, flutters with every breeze; there is always some desire luring her on, some convention holding her back.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Women, Struggle, Passion

  Gustave Flaubert (2010). “Madame Bovary: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.92, Penguin

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• If a man knows precisely what he can do to you or what epithet he can hurl against you in order to make you lose your temper, your equilibrium, then he can always keep you under subjection.

  Howard Thurman

  Men, Order, Epithet

  Howard Thurman (2014). “A Strange Freedom: The Best of Howard Thurman on Religious Experience and Public Life”, p.143, Beacon Press

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• Implied Subjection, but requir'd with gentle sway, And by her yielded, by him best receiv'd,- Yielded with coy submission, modest pride, And sweet, reluctant, amorous delay.

  John Milton

  Sweet, Pride, Delay

  John Milton, Henry John Todd (1852). “The Poetical Works of John Milton: With Notes of Various Authors; and with Some Account of the Life and Writings of Milton, Derived Principally from Original Documents in Her Majesty's State-paper Office”, p.72

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• Thus the woman, who had perversely exceeded her proper bounds, is forced back to her own position. She had, indeed, previously been subject to her husband, but that was a liberal and gentle subjection; now, however, she is cast into servitude.

  John Calvin

  Husband, Gentle, Casts

  John Calvin (2012). “John Calvin's Commentaries On Genesis 1-23 (Annotated Edition)”, p.135, Jazzybee Verlag

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The dogma of woman's complete historical subjection to men must be rated as one of the most fantastic myths ever created by the human mind.

  Mary Ritter Beard

  Women, Historical, Mind

  Mary Ritter Beard, Ann J. Lane (1977). “Making Women's History: The Essential Mary Ritter Beard”, p.185, Feminist Press at CUNY

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• For the love of gain would reconcile the weaker to the dominion of the stronger, and the possession of capital enabled the more powerful to reduce the smaller cities to subjection.

  Thucydides

  Powerful, Cities, Stronger

  Thucydides, Victor Davis Hanson, Robert B. Strassler (2008). “The Landmark Thucydides”, p.7, Simon and Schuster

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• When ordinary people wake up, elites begin to tremble in their boots.

  Cornel West

  People, Ordinary, Wake Up

  Twitter post from May 27, 2010

  36 Copy quote

  Show source

• Civilization involves subjection of force to reason, and the agency of this subjection is law.

  Roscoe Pound

  Agency, Law, Civilization

  10 Copy quote

• it is not men that most women worry about when they rise to the defense of the status quo. Their apparent endorsement of male supremacy is, rather, a pathetic striving for self-respect, self-justification, and self-pardon. After fifteen hundred years of subjection to men, Western woman finds it almost unbearable to face the fact that she has been hoodwinked and enslaved by her inferiors - that the master is lesser than the slave.

  Elizabeth Gould Davis

  Men, Years, Self

  "The First Sex". Book by Elizabeth Gould Davis. Chapter 21: "The Prejudice Lingers On", 1971.

  53 Copy quote

  Show source

• Govern your temper, which will rule you unless kept in subjection.

  Horace

  Temper

  10 Copy quote

• We submit to the majority because we have to. But we are not compelled to call our attitude of subjection a posture of respect.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Attitude, Majority, Posture

  Ambrose Bierce (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)”, p.2692, Delphi Classics

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• The more I consider the condition of the white men, the more fixed becomes my opinion that, instead of gaining, they have lost much by subjecting themselves to what they call the laws and regulations of civilized socieities.

  Tomochichi

  Native American, Men, White

  64 Copy quote

• To be a woman condemned to a wretched and disgraceful punishment is no impediment to beauty, but it is an insurmountable obstacle to power. Like all persons of real genius, her ladyship well knew what accorded with her nature and her means. Poverty disgusted her -subjection deprived her of two-thirds of her greatness. Her ladyship was only a queen amongst queens: the enjoyment of satisfied pride was essential to her sway. To command beings of an inferior nature, was, to her, rather a humiliation than a pleasure.

  Alexandre Dumas

  Queens, Real, Mean

  5 Copy quote

• Peace is nothing more than the regulation of the psycho-political economy of awe and reverential fear, of using the threat of terror in order to bind citizens to the circuit of their subjection.

  Simon Critchley

  Order, Political, Citizens

  Simon Critchley (2008). “Infinitely Demanding: Ethics of Commitment, Politics of Resistance”, Verso Books

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• A real subjection is born mechanically from a fictitious relation [...] He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribed in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection.

  Michel Foucault

  Real, Responsibility, Play

  9 Copy quote

• Thus strength is afforded by good and thorough customs, thus is learnt the subjection of the individual, and strenuousness of character becomes a birth gift and afterwards is fostered as a habit.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Character, Personality, Birth

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2012). “Human, All-Too-Human: Parts One and Two”, p.122, Courier Corporation

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• The woman born to physical subjection and degradation can never seek or use knowledge as her birthright. Never till she holds her sex in honor, as man holds his, can she be his equal, even in her own realm.

  Mary C. Ames

  Sex, Women, Honor

  9 Copy quote

• We found nothing grand in the history of the Jews nor in the morals inculcated in the Pentateuch. I know of no other books that so fully teach the subjection and degradation of woman.

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton

  Book, Aggravation, Degradation

  8 Copy quote