Top 97 Servile Quotes
#1. Whatever offices of life are performed by women of culture and refinement are thenceforth elevated; they cease to be mere servile toils, and become expressions of the ideas of superior beings.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
#2. Of all mechanics, of all servile handycrafts-men, a gamester is the vilest. But yet, as many of the quality are of the profession, he is admitted amongst the politest company.
John Gay
#3. It is just as difficult and dangerous to try to free a people that wants to remain servile as it is to enslave a people that wants to remain free.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#4. Every campaign, Garry Wills once wrote, "taught Nixon the same lesson: mobilize resentment against those in power." History taught the same to many conservative and reactionary populist movements, whose real attitude to those in power and authority was one of a servile, envious, vicarious adoration.
Christopher Hitchens
#5. [All] the manly virtues were oppressed by the servile and pusillanimous reign of the monks.
Edward Gibbon
#6. Servile doubt argues an impotence of mind, that says we fear because we dare not meet misfortunes.
Aaron Hill
#7. I myself owe everything to French books. They developed in my soul the sentiments of humanity which had been stifled by eight years of fanatical and servile education.
Cesare Beccaria
#8. American working men are principals in the three-member team of capital, management, labor. Never have they regarded themselves as a servile class that could attain freedom only through destruction of the industrial economy.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#9. Give me, indulgent gods with mind serene, And guiltless heart, to range the sylvan scene, No splendid poverty, no smiling care, No well-bred hate, or servile grandeur, there.
Edward Young
#10. Every age might perhaps produce one or two geniuses, if they were not sunk under the censure and obloquy of plodding, servile, imitating pedants.
Jonathan Swift
#11. In the mind that is once truly disciplined and purged, thou canst not find anything, either foul or impure, or as it were festered: nothing that is either servile, or affected: no partial tie; no malicious averseness; nothing obnoxious; nothing concealed.
Marcus Aurelius
#12. We notice the person who is for ever bowing and fussily servile, and perhaps say, How humble he is! But the truly humble person escapes notice: the world does not know him.
Tito Colliander
#13. By nature servile, people attempt at first glance to find signs of good breeding in the appearance of those who occupy more exalted stations.
Anton Chekhov
#14. The most esteemed journalists are precisely the most servile. For it is by making themselves useful to the powerful that they gain access to the "best" sources.
Walter Karp
#16. We are whiplashed between an arrogant overestimation of ourselves and a servile underestimation of ourselves.
Parker J. Palmer
#17. The superior thing, in this as in other departments of life, was to be late. Lateness showed that serene contempt for the illusion we call time which is so necessary to ensure the respect of others and oneself. Only the servile are punctual ... Mystery at Geneva
Rose Macaulay
#18. A small politician, of low capacity and mean surroundings, proud to act as the servile tool of men worse than himself but also stronger and abler.
Theodore Roosevelt
#19. This spirit of mob-law is becoming as great an evil as a servile war.
Andrew Jackson
#20. Bacon first taught the world the true method of the study of nature, and rescued science from that barbarism in which the followers of Aristotle, by a too servile imitation of their master.
Thomas Young
#21. The leading princes are the most servile tools of English despotism ... The native princes are the stronghold of the present abominable English system.
Karl Marx
#22. The Bostonians are really, as a race, far inferior in point of anything beyond mere intellect to any other set upon the continent of North America. They are decidedly the most servile imitators of the English it is possible to conceive.
Edgar Allan Poe
#23. Show me a population that is deeply religious and I will show you a servile population, content with whips and chains, ... content to eat the bread of sorrow and drink the waters of affliction.
Hubert Harrison
#24. Sheep, cattle, men-servants were all possessions to be sold as it pleased their masters. It were a good thing were it still so. For else no man may compel nor tame the servile folk.
Martin Luther
#25. Truth is not by nature free-nor error servile-its production is thoroughly imbued with relations of power.
Michel Foucault
#26. I could become servile, cloying, saccharinely sweet: the whole package of lies that passes in the world as femininity.
Erica Jong
#27. If I could do just one thing, it would be to dissociate faith from virtue, now and for good, and to expose it for what it is, a servile weakness, a refuge in cowardice, and a willingness to follow, with credulity, people who are in the highest degree unscrupulous.
Christopher Hitchens
#28. There are people in this servile world who will endure any trampling, and at the first beck rush delightedly to proffer their assistance.
Richard Jefferies
#30. Sincerity may be humble but she cannot be servile.
Lord Byron
#31. And by that habit of submission, with which we are only too familiar, the thought of the next generation retains this religious twist, which is at once servile and authoritative; for authority and servility walk ever hand in hand.
Pyotr Kropotkin
#32. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.
Theodore Roosevelt
#33. Men who so uneasily tolerate superiors patiently suffer a master, and show themselves proud and servile at the same time.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#34. Wait and see whether the religion of the Servile State is not in every case what I say: the encouragement of small virtues supporting capitalism, the discouragement of the huge virtues that defy it.
G.K. Chesterton
#35. The hollowness of our worship, and that servile imitation of the world which marks our promotional methods all testify that we, in this day, know God only imperfectly, and the peace of God scarcely at all.
A.W. Tozer
#36. America is a new kind of society that produces a new kind of human being. That human being - confident, self-reliant, tolerant, generous, future-oriented - is a vast improvement over the wretched, servile, fatalistic and intolerant human being that traditional societies have always produced.
Dinesh D'Souza
#37. A servile race Who, in mere want of fault, all merit place; Who blind obedience pay to ancient schools, Bigots to Greece, and slaves to musty rules.
Charles Churchill
#38. People who wish to salute the free and independent side of their evolutionary character acquire cats. People who wish to pay homage to their servile and salivating roots own dogs.
Anna Quindlen
#39. Such is the nature of crowds: either they are humble and servile or arrogant and dominating. They are incapable of making moderate use of freedom, which is the middle course, or of keeping it.
Livy
#40. By Oppression's woes and pains!
By your sons in servile chains!
We will drain our dearest veins,
But they shall be free!
Lay the proud usurpers low!
Tyrants fall in every foe!
Liberty's in every blow!
Let us do or die!
Robert Burns
#41. These overtures of peace, translated into the servile and flattering language of Asia, were transmitted to the camp of the Great King; who resolved to signify, by an ambassador, the terms which he was inclined to grant to the suppliant Romans.
Edward Gibbon
#42. So-called Individualism is the social and economic laissez-faire: the exploitation of the masses by the classes by means of legal trickery, spiritual debasement and systematic indoctrination of the servile spirit, which process is known as 'education'.
Emma Goldman
#43. It is beautiful in a picture to wash the disciples' feet; but the sands of the real desert have no lustre in them to compensate for the servile nature of the occupation.
John Henry Newman
#44. This man is freed from servile bands, Of hope to rise, or fear to fall; Lord of himself, though not of lands, And leaving nothing, yet hath all.
Lord Byron
#45. It is impossible that anything will be well understood or well done that is taken into a reluctant understanding, and executed with a servile hand.
Joshua Reynolds
#46. Be Reserved, but not Sour; Grave, but not Formal; Bold, but not Rash; Humble, but not Servile; Patient, not Insensible; Constant, not Obstinate; Chearful, not Light; Rather Sweet than Familiar; Familiar, than Intimate; and Intimate with very few, and upon very good Grounds.
Various
#47. The gentleman is a man of truth, lord of his own actions, and expressing that lordship in his behavior, not in any manner dependent and servile either on persons, or opinions, or possessions.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#48. There's a basis for the war, historically, in the 'Hunger Games,' which would be the third servile war, which was Spartacus' war, where you have a man who is a slave who is then turned into a gladiator who broke out of the gladiator school and led a rebellion and then became the face of the war.
Suzanne Collins
#49. To conform within rational limits to a given style is no more servile than to pay one's taxes or to write according to the rule of grammar.
Elsie De Wolfe
#50. Some people were born to work for others. Not in a mindless, servile-way
rather they simply work better in a set regimen of daily tasks and functions. Others were born of the entrepreneurial spirit and enjoy the demands of self-determination and the roll of the dice.
Richard Paul Evans
#51. The exercise of criticism always destroys for a time our sensibility to beauty by leading us to regard the work in relation to certain laws of construction. The eye turns from the charms of nature to fix itself upon the servile dexterity of art.
Sir Archibald Alison, 2nd Baronet
#52. A servile spirit you have nothing to do with: you are not a slave, but a child; and now, inasmuch as you are a beloved child, you are bound to obey your Father's faintest wish, the least intimation of His will.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
#53. You shall not pile, with servile toil, Your monuments upon my breast, Nor yet within the common soil Lay down the wreck of power to rest, Where man can boast that he has trod On him that was "the scourge of God."
Edward Everett Hale
#54. To be a woman and a writer is double mischief, for the world will slight her who slights "the servile house," and who would rather make odes than beds.
Dilys Laing
#55. There is something servile in the habit of seeking after a law which we must obey.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#56. In a despotic government, the only principle by which the tyrant who is to move the whole machine means to regulate and manage the people is fear, by the servile dread of his power. But a free government, which of all others is far the most preferable, cannot be supported without virtue.
Samuel Williams
#57. If I was to interrupt this article every few sentences, asking you whether or not I was making a good impression on you, I hope and believe that you would think I was a servile jerk. Yet this is what our politicians are doing in every speech.
Christopher Hitchens
#58. The megalopsychos cannot let anyone else, except a friend, determine his life. For that would be slavish; and this is why all flatterers are servile and inferior people are flatterers.
Aristotle.
#59. Too many American authors have a servile streak where their backbone should be. Where's our latest Nobel laureate? More than likely you'll find him in the Rose Garden kissing the First Lady's foot.
Edward Abbey
#60. The superior thing ... was to be late. Lateness showed that serene contempt for the illusion we call time which is so necessary to ensure the respect of others and oneself. Only the servile are punctual ...
Rose Macaulay
#61. It is one of the paradoxes of journalism: The more servile a reporter is toward his sources, the more authoritative he can appear in print.
Andrew Ferguson
#62. Earl Moncrief, the butler, built his financial, procurement, and secret service organizations with the brute power of cash and a profound understanding of clever, malicious, discontented people who lived behind servile facades.
Kurt Vonnegut
#63. Servile labour disappeared because it could not stand the competition of free labour; its un-profitability sealed its doom in the market economy.
Ludwig Von Mises
#64. This is the fantasy of every woman - to hold at our feet servile and tame slaves, like in Roman times. And the worse we treat them, the more passionate they become.
Thalia
#65. To fear the foe, since fear oppresseth strength,
Gives, in your weakness, strength unto your foe,
And so your follies fight against yourself.
Fear, and be slain
so worse can come to fight;
And fight and die is death destroying death,
Where fearing dying pays death servile breath.
William Shakespeare
#66. I will give a proof to demonstrate with facts that there are no rules in painting and that oppression or servile obligation of making all study or follow the same path is a great impediment for the young who profess this very difficult art.
Francisco Goya
#67. Servile, and base, and mercenary, is the notion of Christian practice among the bulk of nominal Christians. They give no more than they dare not with-hold; they abstain from nothing but what they must not practise.
William Wilberforce
#68. I cannot copy nature in a servile way; I am forced to interpret nature and submit it to the spirit of the picture. From the relationship I have found in all the tones there must result a living harmony of colors, a harmony analogous to that of a musical composition.
Henri Matisse
#70. Turning, for them who pass, the common dust Of servile opportunity to gold.
William Wordsworth
#71. The ethical system that will dominate the world-state will be shaped primarily to favor the procreation of what is fine and efficient and beautiful in humanity - beautiful and strong bodies, clear and powerful minds - and to check the procreation of base and servile type.
H.G.Wells
#72. I hardly know so true a mark of a little mind as the servile imitation of others.
Sir Fulke Greville
#73. We should be sensible, tactful, considerate and humble without being servile or scraping. As God's people we stand on our feet; we don't crawl before anyone.
Alcoholics Anonymous
#74. On Creating - What we crave, what we want to see in others eyes, is that servile expression, an unconcealed infatuation with our gestures.
Emile M. Cioran
#75. Turn pimp, flatterer, quack, lawyer, parson, be chaplain to an atheist, or stallion to an old woman, anything but a poet; for a poet is worse, more servile, timorous and fawning than any I have named.
William Congreve
#76. These growing feathers pluck'd from Caesar's wing
Will make him fly an ordinary pitch,
Who else would soar above the view of men
And keep us all in servile fearfulness.
William Shakespeare
#77. Technology plows through history at an accelerating rate, shifting the burden of production off labor into the nonhuman factor because man uses his highest ingenuity to avoid servile labor.
Louis O. Kelso
#78. We live in a time of twin credulities: the hunger for the miraculous combined with a servile awe of science. The mating of the two gives us superstition plus scientism
a Mongoloid metaphysic.
Edward Abbey
#79. It is specially characteristic of the German that the more servile he on the one hand is, the more uncontrolled is he on the other; restraint and want of restraint - originality, is the angel of darkness that buffets us.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
#80. [Photography] remains servile to a thoughtless vision of the world ... As the term snapshot suggests, photography seizes the moment and exhibits it.
Claude Levi-Strauss
#81. I tell ye true, liberty is the best of all things; never live beneath the noose of a servile halter.
William Wallace
#82. The person who thinks with [their] own brain is to be preferred to the one who blindly approves everything ... Better an error consciously committed and in good faith, than a good action performed in a servile manner.
Errico Malatesta
#83. Force works on servile natures, not the free.
Ben Jonson
#84. Every Tory is a coward; for servile, slavish, self-interested fear is the foundation of Toryism; and a man under such influence, though he may be cruel, never can be brave.
Thomas Paine
#85. Imitators are a slavish herd and fools in my opinion.
[Fr., C'est un betail servile et sot a mon avis
Que les imitateurs.]
Jean De La Fontaine
#86. But you can live in the most democratic country on earth, and if you're lazy, obtuse or servile within yourself, you're not free.
Ignazio Silone
#87. Imitators are but a servile kind of cattle.
John Dryden
#88. The value of a work of art cannot ultimately turn on the more or less of its subservience to ideology; for painting can be grandly subservient to the half-truths of the moment, doggedly servile, and yet be no less intense.
T.J. Clark
#89. She is an animal. Servile as a dog. And yet if he is careful to make no demands, to leave the air between them open, another version of the windup girl emerges. As precious and rare as a living bo tree. Her soul, emerging from within the strangling strands of her engineered DNA.
Paolo Bacigalupi
#90. The laws should be rigidly enforced which prohibit the immigration of a servile class to compete with American labor, with no intention of acquiring citizenship, and bringing with them and retaining habits and customs repugnant to our civilization.
Grover Cleveland
#91. Then all my servile works were done A righteousness to raise; Now, freely chosen in the Son, I freely choose his ways.
Sinclair B. Ferguson
#92. In sex we have the source of man's true connection with the cosmos and of his servile dependence. The categories of sex, male and female, are cosmic categories, not merely anthropological categories.
Nikolai Berdyaev
#93. I did not ask for objections, but for comments, or helpful suggestions. I looked for more loyalty from you, Captain Hornblower.'
That made the whole argument pointless. If Leighton only wanted servile agreement there was no sense in continuing ...
C.S. Forester
#94. The reader may remember, that when I signed those articles upon which I recovered my liberty, there were some which I disliked, upon account of their being too servile; neither
Jonathan Swift
#95. Praise and blame alike mean nothing. No, delightful as the pastime of measuring may be, it is the most futile of all occupations, and to submit to the decrees of the measurers the most servile of attitudes.
Virginia Woolf
#96. Take accessible to mean / acceptable, accommodating, openly servile.
Geoffrey Hill
#97. You do not know the unfathomable cowardice of humanity ... servile in the face of force, pitiless in the face of weakness, implacable before blunders, indulgent before crimes ... and patient to the point of martyrdom before all the violences of bold despotism.
Niccolo Machiavelli
