Quotes about Exploitation

Tolstoy said, "The antagonism between life and conscience may be removed in two ways: by a change of life or by a change of conscience." Many of us have elected to adjust our consciences rather than our lives. Our powers of rationalization allow us to live in luxury and indifference while others, whom we could help if we chose to, go hungry, are abused and exploited, or go to Hell.

Every culture exploits some segment of society in order to entertain hungers, either private or public. We are all pleasure seekers, and what gives us pleasure is a revelation of our values.

Of all the enterprises in which the human heart engages, none lends itself more to abuse and manipulation than the activities of religion. For here, sacrifice and greed can meet in the most trusting and exploiting context.

Life is lived out in self-contained compartments with nothing to connect them. Their bowing recognizes the sacred. Their expoiting grants the material. In living they desecrate others without a twinge of conscience. Yet if anyone were to hint at desecrating that shrine, his life sould be in peril. Such is the amputation of religion that pays homage to God but would be the most surprised if God were ever to show up.

Our public life is largely premised on an exploitation of our common anxiety. The advertising of consumerism and the drives of the acquisitive society, like he serpent, seduce into believing there are securities apart from the reality of God.

Save us, Lord, from a religion that ignores the cries of the exploited and oppressed. Lead us into a deeper faith that challenges injustice and makes the sacrifices that must be made to build a society that is ever more truly human. Amen.

The royal dynasty of King David, as portrayed in the biblical text, was a tax-collecting, labor-exploiting, surplus-wealth-exhibiting regime.

This story begins wherever there is enough courage and freedom and daring and sensibility to acknowledge that the pain of ruthless exploitation is not normal and cannot be borne.

It is astonishing that critical scholarship has asked forever about the identification of these store-house cities, but without ever asking about the skewed exploitative social relationships between owner and laborers that the project exhibits

A man who seeks escape from the responsibility of supporting his life by his own thought and effort, and wishes to survive by conquering, ruling and exploiting others, is NOT an Individualist.

The mission of men there seems to be, like so many busy demons, to drive the forest all out of the country, from every solitary beaver swamp and mountain-side, as soon as possible.

False riches, consisting of money, houses and lands, acquired by selfish means at cost to others and thereafter used selfishly, are almost always used for the oppression of other persons.