“An infirmity which affects the whole race, is no proper object for the scorn of an individual who belongs to that race, and who, before he could expose it, must himself have been its slave.”

—  Johann Gottlieb Fichte

Source: The Characteristics of the Present Age (1806), p. 12

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "An infirmity which affects the whole race, is no proper object for the scorn of an individual who belongs to that race,…" by Johann Gottlieb Fichte?
Johann Gottlieb Fichte photo
Johann Gottlieb Fichte 102
German philosopher 1762–1814

Related quotes

Jean Cocteau photo

“Disavow anyone who provokes or accepts the extermination of a race to which he does not belong.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

Diary of an Unknown (1988)

Mark Twain photo

“Jesus died to save men — a small thing for an immortal to do, & didn't save many, anyway; but if he had been damned for the race that would have been act of a size proper to a god, & would have saved the whole race. However, why should anybody want to save the human race, or damn it either? Does God want its society? Does Satan?”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Notebook #42

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu photo

“I started with an impulse of my heart, with that instinct of defense which even the least of the worms has, not with the instinct of personal self-preservation, but of defense of the race to which I belong. This is why I have always had the feeling that the whole race rests on our shoulders, the living, and those who died for the Fatherland, and our entire future, and that the race struggles and speaks through us, that the hostile flock, however huge, in relation to this historical entity, is only a handful of human detritus which we will disperse and defeat… The individual in the framework and in the service of his race, the race in the framework and in the service of God and of the laws of the divinity: those who will understand these things will win even though they are alone. Those who will not understand will be defeated.”

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899–1938) Romanian politician

For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), Nation and Culture

Terry Goodkind photo

“Every person's life is theirs by right. An individual's life can and must belong only to to himself, not to any society or community, or he is then but a slave.”

Terry Goodkind (1948) American novelist
Antonin Scalia photo

“Individuals who have been wronged by unlawful racial discrimination should be made whole; but under our Constitution there can be no such thing as either a creditor or a debtor race. That concept is alien to the Constitution's focus upon the individual.... To pursue the concept of racial entitlement - even for the most admirable and benign of purposes - is to reinforce and preserve for future mischief the way of thinking that produced race slavery, race privilege and race hatred. In the eyes of government, we are just one race here. It is American.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peña, 515 U.S. 200, 239 (1995) (Scalia, J., concurring).
1990s

Georg Simmel photo

“The individual who is subordinate to an objective law feels himself determined by it, while he, in turn, in no way determines the law, and has no possibility of reacting to it in a manner which could influence it—quite in contrast to even the most miserable slave, who, in some fashion at last, can still in this sense react to his master.”

Georg Simmel (1858–1918) German sociologist, philosopher, and critic

“Domination” (1908), in On Individuality and Social Forms (1971), pp. 113-114

Michelle Obama photo

“And then there’s this guy, Barack Obama, who lost – I could take up a whole afternoon talking about his failures, but – he lost his first race for Congress, and now he gets to call himself my husband…”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

"Michelle Obama Tells Grads: ‘I Could Take Up a Whole Afternoon Talking About’ Barack Obama’s Failures", in CNSNews (20 May 2013) http://cnsnews.com/news/article/michelle-obama-tells-grads-i-could-take-whole-afternoon-talking-about-barack-obama-s
2010s

John Marshall Harlan photo

“A Chinaman can ride in the same passenger coach with white citizens of the United States, while citizens of the black race in Louisiana, many of whom, perhaps, risked their lives for the preservation of the Union, who are entitled, by law, to participate in the political control of the State and nation, who are not excluded, by law or by reason of their race, from public stations of any kind, and who have all the legal rights that belong to white citizens, are yet declared to be criminals, liable to imprisonment, if they ride in a public coach occupied by citizens of the white race. He does not object, nor, perhaps, would he object to separate coaches for his race if his rights under the law were recognized. But he objecting, and ought never to cease objecting, to the proposition that citizens of the white and black race can be adjudged criminals because they sit, or claim the right to sit, in the same public coach on a public highway.”

John Marshall Harlan (1833–1911) United States Union Army officer and Supreme Court Associate Justice

1890s, Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

Seneca the Younger photo

“Who vaunts his race, lauds what belongs to others.”
qui genus iactat suum, aliena laudat.

Seneca the Younger Hercules Furens

Alternate translation: He who boasts of his descent, praises the deeds of another (translator unknown).
Hercules Furens (The Madness of Hercules), lines 340-341; (Lycus).
Tragedies

“It is individuals who must be encouraged to undertake the unprecedented - and unprecedentedly profitable - effort to prevent the annihilation of the human race.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"How Many Americans Does It Take to Change a Dim Bulb?" Presented to the Second Annual Freedom Summit, Phoenix, Arizona, 12 & 13 October 2002 http://www.lneilsmith.org/freedomsummit2.html.

Related topics