The slaves of developed industrial civilization are sublimated slaves.

We are the slaves of slaves

There is one thing more despicable than a tyrant— it is a nation of slaves.

In war, the strong make slaves of the weak, and in peace the rich makes slaves of the poor.

Hundreds of thousands and millions of wage slaves of capital and peasants downtrodden by the serf-owners are going to the slaughter for the dynastic interests of a handful of crowned brigands, for the profits of the bourgeoisie in its drive to plunder foreign lands.

True Christians are made to be slaves.

We are slaves in the sense that we depend for our daily survival upon an expand-or-expire agro-industrial empire — a crackpot machine — that the specialists cannot comprehend and the managers cannot manage. Which is, furthermore, devouring world resources at an exponential rate. We are, most of us, dependent employees. …Edward Abbey (1927-1989)

Beware the nation in which one man rules, for it is a nation of slaves.

A country governed by a despot is an inverted cone.

Some people are by nature slaves and will always be so.

Poverty makes a slave out of men. In order to eat he will accept work that gives no pleasure.

[W]hen the class that monopolizes wealth and arms embodies its power in a centralized bureaucracy and an irresistible standing army, we get a despotism in its worst form – namely, a barbarous and primitive system of government that has the instruments of an advanced civilization at its disposal, a yoke of iron which is applied by rough and reckless hands and which is very hard to break, since it has been steeled and tempered by practical artisans.

The machine is a slave which serves to make other slaves. Such a domineering and enslaving drive may go together with the quest for human freedom. But it is difficult to liberate oneself by transferring slavery to other beings, men, animals, or machines; to rule over a population of machines subjecting the whole world means still to rule, and all rule implies acceptance of schemata of subjection.

If I cherish my body, I make a slave of myself, if I cherish my property, I make a slave of myself; [24] because I’ve disclosed the means to make me captive.