We shall never be abandoned by Heaven while we act worthy of its aid and protection
Samuel AdamsRead
Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen!
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects the sentiments of subservience and the desire for historical oblivion regarding oppression.
Samuel Adams's quote conveys a strong critique of those who submit to oppressive circumstances, suggesting that they should show gratitude to their oppressors. The imagery of 'licking the hands which feed you' symbolizes a demeaning loyalty and servitude, while the hope that 'posterity forget' them indicates a desire for the oppressed not to be remembered for their oppression or complicity, eliciting reflection on personal and societal choices in the face of tyranny.
Themes
OppressionServitudeFreedomGratitudeHistorical Amnesia
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a discussion about civil rights and the importance of standing up against oppression.
More from Samuel Adams
All quotes βNothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable characters.
Samuel AdamsRead
If taxes are laid upon us in any shape without our having a legal representation where they are laid, are we not reduced from the character of free subjects to the miserable state of tributary slaves? We claim British rights not by charter only! We are born to them.
Samuel AdamsRead
Let no man thirst for good beer.
Samuel AdamsRead
He therefore is the truest friend to the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue, and who, so far as his power and influence extend, will not suffer a man to be chosen into any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man.
Samuel AdamsRead
We boast of our freedom, and we have your example for it. We talk the language we have always heard you speak.
Samuel AdamsRead
Similar quotes
Tax policy should reflect a country's values and address its problems.
Joseph StiglitzRead
The effect of that is to poison the flow of information to the President himself and to create a situation where a President can be almost, to use a metaphor, psychotically divorced from the realities in which he is acting.
Daniel EllsbergRead
The only guarantee of the Bill of Rights which continues to have any force and effect is the one prohibiting quartering troops on citizens in time of peace. All the rest have been disposed of by judicial interpretation and legislative whittling.
H. L. MenckenRead
The failure of the Russian Socialist Republic will be the defeat of the proletariat of the whole world.
Karl LiebknechtRead
Deregulation is a transfer of power from the trodden to the treading. It is unsurprising that all conservative parties claim to hate big government.
George MonbiotRead
From the U.S. point of view, negotiations are, in effect, a way for Israel to continue its policies of systematically taking over whatever it wants in the West Bank, maintaining the brutal siege on Gaza, separating Gaza from the West Bank and, of course, occupying the Syrian Golan heights, all with full U.S. support.
Noam ChomskyRead