Social & Racial Sayings

The slave has no deliberative faculty at all; the woman has, but it is without authority, and the child has, but it is immature.

The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.

Some men are born slaves, and others are born to rule.

It is clear that the best state is that in which the middle class is in control, and that those states are likely to be well-administered, in which the middle class is large, and stronger than both the other classes, or at any rate than either of the…

May I be privileged to build the foundations of the state safe and sound, and lay the groundwork for the future as I wish, and so gain the reward of my endeavor: to be called the author of the best possible constitution, and to carry with me, when I …

I freed the slaves and returned them to their homes.

Freedom and slavery, the one is the name of virtue, and the other of vice, and both are acts of the will.

If you see anybody wail and complain, call him a slave, though he be clad in purple.

Understand that the right to choose your own path is a sacred privilege. Use it. Live free and flourish.

What you shun enduring yourself, attempt not to impose on others. You shun slavery- beware enslaving others! If you can endure to do that, one would think you had been once upon a time a slave yourself. For vice has nothing in common with virtue, nor…

For there is some use even in an ass, but not so much as in an ox: there is also use in a dog, but not so much as in a slave: there is also some use in a slave, but not so much as in citizens: there is also some use in citizens, but not so much as in…

Don't just say you have read books. Show that through them you have learned to think more accurately, to be less of a slave to your passions, to be more tranquil and self-possessed. Speeches are one thing, life another.

Choose to be either free or a slave, enlightened or a fool, a thoroughbred or a nag. Either resign yourself to a life of abuse till you die, or escape it immediately. For God's sake, don't put up with years of abuse, and then change your mind! This h…

If a barber, without the knowledge of the owner of a slave, cuts off the slave's 'mark,' he shall cut off the barber's fingers.

If a member of the awilum class struck someone of equal status, they would pay one mina of silver. But if they struck a member of the mushkenum class, they would pay only ten shekels.

If a man has harbored a runaway slave, male or female, in his house and has not brought him forth at the summons of the public crier, the owner of the house shall be put to death.

Melantho, a female slave in Odysseus' household, is called a 'little dog' by Odysseus.

No winning words about death to me, shining Odysseus! By god, I'd rather slave on earth for another man-- Some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive—than rule down here over all the breathless dead.

Odysseus grabbed her throat with his right hand and told her he 'will not spare [her] when [he] kill[s] the rest, / the other slave women, although [she was] / [his] nurse'.

The Germans are a race without culture or discipline.