George Fitzhugh: Trending quotes

“[T]he unrestricted exploitation of so-called free society is more oppressive to the laborer than domestic slavery.”

George Fitzhugh

Source: Cannibals All!, or Slaves Without Masters (1857), p. ix

“The normal state of a free society is a state of famine.”

George Fitzhugh

Source: Cannibals All!, or Slaves Without Masters (1857), p. 335

“The weak in mind or body require guidance, support and protection; they must obey and work for those who protect and guide them—they have a natural right to guardians, committees, teachers or masters. Nature has made them slaves, all that law and government can do, is to regulate, modify and mitigate their slavery.”

George Fitzhugh

Source: Sociology For The South: Or The Failure Of A Free Society (1854), p. 178

Law , Support , Nature , Teachers

“What is falsely called Free Society, is a very recent invention. It purposes to make the weak, ignorant and poor, free, by turning them loose in a world owned exclusively by the few.”

George Fitzhugh

Source: Cannibals All!, or Slaves Without Masters (1857), p. 108

World , Falseness

“No association, no efficient combination of labor can be effected till men give up their liberty of action and subject themselves to a common despotic head or ruler. This is slavery, and towards this socialism is moving.”

George Fitzhugh

Source: Sociology For The South: Or The Failure Of A Free Society (1854), p. 61

Men

“[T]he capitalists now live entirely by the proceeds of poor men’s labor, which capital enables them to command.”

George Fitzhugh

Source: Cannibals All!, or Slaves Without Masters (1857), p. 325

Men

“The Abolitionists and Socialists, who, alone have explored the recesses of social science, well understand that they can never establish their Utopia until private property is abolished or equalized. The man without property is theoretically, and, too often, practically, without a single right.”

George Fitzhugh

Cannibals All!, or Slaves Without Masters (1857)

Understanding , Science

“The capitalist cheapens their wages; they compete with and underbid each other, for employed they must be on any terms. This war of the rich with the poor and the poor with one another, is the morality which political economy inculcates.”

George Fitzhugh

Source: Sociology For The South: Or The Failure Of A Free Society (1854), pp. 22-23

War

“The vampire capitalist class impose all the taxes, and pay none.”

George Fitzhugh

Source: Cannibals All!, or Slaves Without Masters (1857), p. 175

“We conclude that about nineteen out of every twenty individuals have ‘a natural and inalienable right’ to be taken care of and protected; to have guardians, trustees, husbands, or masters; in other words, they have the natural and inalienable right to be slaves.”

George Fitzhugh

Source: Cannibals All!, or Slaves Without Masters (1857), pp. 102-103

Nature

“What a glorious thing to man is slavery, when want, misfortune, old age, debility and sickness overtake him.”

George Fitzhugh

Source: Sociology For The South: Or The Failure Of A Free Society (1854), p. 68

Age

“Liberty is an evil which government is intended to correct. This is the sole object of government.”

George Fitzhugh

Source: Sociology For The South: Or The Failure Of A Free Society (1854), p. 170

Evil

“Were he a slave, he would enjoy in fact as well as in legal fiction, all necessary and essential rights. Pure air and water, a house, sufficient food, fire, and clothing, would be his at all times.”

George Fitzhugh

Source: Cannibals All!, or Slaves Without Masters (1857), p. 324

Food , Water , Time , Housing

“Liberty of the press, liberty of speech, freedom of religion, or rather freedom from religion, and the unlimited right of private judgement have borne no good fruit, and many bad ones.”

George Fitzhugh

Source: Cannibals All!, or Slaves Without Masters (1857), p. 195

Religion , Freedom

“Liberty and equality are not only destructive to the morals, but to the happiness of society.”

George Fitzhugh

Source: Sociology For The South: Or The Failure Of A Free Society (1854), p. 236

Happiness

“…the great truth which lies at the foundation of all society—that every man has property in his fellow-man!”

George Fitzhugh

Source: Sociology For The South: Or The Failure Of A Free Society (1854), p. 69

Truth

“We say allowance, not wages; for neither slaves nor free laborers get wages, in the popular sense of the term: that is, the employer or capitalist pays them for nothing of his own, but allows them a part, generally a very small part of the proceeds of their own labor.”

George Fitzhugh

Source: Cannibals All!, or Slaves Without Masters (1857), p. 48

Sense , Parting

“The true greatness of Mr. Jefferson was his fitness for revolution. He was the genius of innovation, the architect of ruin, the inaugurator of anarchy. His mission was to pull down, not to build up… He proposed to govern boys without the authority of masters or the control of religion, supplying their places with Laissez-faire philosophy, and morality from the pages of Lawrence Sterne. His character, like a philosophy, is exceptional—invaluable in urging on revolution, but useless, if not dangerous, in quiet times.”

George Fitzhugh

Source: Cannibals All!, or Slaves Without Masters (1857), pp. 201-202

Religion , Boy , Time

“[Man] is not free because he has no where that he may rightfully lay his head. Private property has monopolized the earth, and destroyed both his liberty and equality.”

George Fitzhugh

Source: Cannibals All!, or Slaves Without Masters (1857), p. 324

“The greatest of all communists, if communist he be, Proudhon, has also seen and exposed this tendency of socialism to slavery. He is a thorough-going enemy of modern free society; call property a thief; and would, he says, establish anarchy in place of government.”

George Fitzhugh

Source: Sociology For The South: Or The Failure Of A Free Society (1854), p. 62