Getting a living under capitalism… is so precarious, so uncertain, fraught with such pain and struggle that the wonder is not that so many people become vicious and criminal, but that so many remain in docile submission to such a tyrannous and debasing condition.

About Eugene V. Debs

Eugene Victor Debs (November 5, 1855 – October 20, 1926) was an American socialist activist and trade unionist. He was one of the founding members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and a five-time candidate of the Socialist Party of America for President of the United States; through...

More quotations from Eugene V. Debs

Years ago I recognized my kinship with all living things, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on the earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.

—Eugene V. Debs

kinship living soul prison men class better

When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are usually right.

—Eugene V. Debs

history progress wrong right morality change principles majority

More quotations tagged with “submission”

Give all to love; obey thy heart.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

heart generosity submission

One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.

—Helen Keller

submission soar consent

To say that there is a case for heroes is not to say that there is a case for hero worship. The surrender of decision, the unquestioning submission to leadership, the prostration of the average man before the Great Man—these are the diseases of heroism, and they are fatal to human dignity.… History amply shows that it is possible to have heroes without turning them into gods. And history shows, too, that when a society, in flight from hero worship, decides to do without great men at all, it gets into troubles of its own.

—Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

history society heroism dignity leadership surrender decision submission hero worship

Power concedes nothing without demand. It never did, and it never will. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and this will continue till they have resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they suppress.

—Frederick Douglass

justice power wrong tyranny resistance demands submission

History

22 May 2015 Added
26 Oct 2026 Wording changed

Previous wording

Getting a living under capitalism . . . is so precarious, so uncertain, fraught with such pain and struggle that the wonder is not that so many people become vicious and criminal, but that so many remain in docile submission to such a tyrannous and debasing condition.