Art begins when a man, with a purpose of communicating to other people a feeling he once experienced, calls it up again within himself and expresses it by certain external signs.
Leo TolstoyRead
Money is a new form of slavery, and distinguishable from the old simply by the fact that it is impersonal - that there is no human relation between master and slave.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that money can control people in a detached way, similar to the old forms of slavery, but without direct personal connections.
Leo Tolstoy's quote highlights the insidious nature of money, suggesting that it enslaves individuals by creating impersonal relationships. Unlike traditional slavery, where the master directly exercised power over the slave, modern economic systems create a distant form of control, where individuals become subservient to financial obligations and societal pressures without the need for personal attachment, leading to a dehumanizing experience.
Themes
MoneySlaveryControlImpersonalFreedom
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about consumerism and its effects on society.
More from Leo Tolstoy
All quotes →Pierre looked into the sky, into the depths of the retreating, twinkling stars. "And all this is mine, and all this is in me, and all this is me!" thought Pierre. "And all this they've caught and put in a shed and boarded it up!
Leo TolstoyRead
People try to do all sorts of clever and difficult things to improve life instead of doing the simplest, easiest thing-refusing to participate in activities that make life bad.
Leo TolstoyRead
It's too easy to criticize a man when he's out of favour, and to make him shoulder the blame for everybody else's mistakes.
Leo TolstoyRead
Music is the shorthand of emotion. Emotions, which let themselves be described in words with such difficulty, are directly conveyed to man in music, and in that is its power and significance.
Leo TolstoyRead
A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one's neighbor — such is my idea of happiness.
Leo TolstoyRead
Similar quotes
Ever since Darwin, we've been familiar with the stupendous timespans of the evolutionary past. But most people still somehow think we humans are necessarily the culmination of the evolutionary tree. No astronomer could believe this.
Martin ReesRead
As an atheist, I think there are lots of things religions get up to which are of value to non-believers - and one of those things is trying to be a bit better than we normally manage to be.
Alain De BottonRead
What we do during our working hours determines what we have; what we do in our leisure hours determines what we are.
George EastmanRead
A 'fair' fight between non-equals is not fair, and being blind to power is an implicit endorsement of the powerful.
Zeynep TufekciRead
There are mythologies that are scattered, broken up, all around us. We stand on what I call a terminal moraine of shattered mythic systems that once structured society. They can be detected all around us. You can select any of these fragments that activate your imagination for your own use. Let it help shape your own relationship to the unconscious system out of which these symbols have come.
Joseph CampbellRead
Progress without the reasoned freedom to think and act is regression to slavery.
Richard John NeuhausRead