Submission Quotes
More Submission Quotes
We owe to our Mother-Country the Duty of Subjects but will not pay her the submission of Slaves.
george mason— Letter to a member of the Brent family (6 December 1770)
There is no happiness where there is no wisdom; No wisdom but in submission to the gods . Big words are always punished, And proud men in old age learn to be wise.
— Line 1347, closing lines
Johnson approached a strongly fortified position by outflanking it, or burrowing under it, or surprising the defenders from the rear, or raining down obstacles upon them from the sky, or starving them into submission? Rarely, and then only reluctantly, would he proceed directly from A to B, to him the shortest distance between two points was a tunnel.
William Raymond Manchester— 1967 Of Lyndon B Johnson. The Death of a President.
DeMaistre and Bonald … wanted to teach men submission, to give them the religion of established power, to substitute, in Bonald’s phrase, “the evidence of authority for the authority of evidence.”
alain finkielkraut— p. 22 (The Undoing of Thought (1988))
The heroes in paganism correspond exactly to the saints in popery, and holy dervises in MAHOMETANISM. The place of, HERCULES, THESEUS, HECTOR, ROMULUS, is now supplied by DOMINIC, FRANCIS, ANTHONY, and BENEDICT. Instead of the destruction of monsters, the subduing of tyrants, the defence of our native country; whippings and fastings, cowardice and humility, abject submission and slavish obedience, are become the means of obtaining celestial honours among mankind.
David Hume— Part X - With regard to courage or abasement
The heroes in paganism correspond exactly to the saints in popery, and holy dervises in MAHOMETANISM. The place of, HERCULES, THESEUS, HECTOR, ROMULUS, is now supplied by DOMINIC, FRANCIS, ANTHONY, and BENEDICT. Instead of the destruction of monsters, the subduing of tyrants, the defence of our native country; whippings and fastings, cowardice and humility, abject submission and slavish obedience, are become the means of obtaining celestial honours among mankind.
David Hume— David Hume, The Natural History of Religion (1757), Part X - "With regard to courage r abasement".
The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender, or submission.
— 1962 Address to the nation, 22 Oct.
Yielded with coy submission, modest pride, And sweet reluctant amorous delay.
john milton— 1665 Of Eve. Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.4, l.310-11.
There is no substitute for a militant freedom. The only alternative is submission and slavery.
calvin coolidge— The Price of Freedom: Speeches and Addresses, Coolidge, The Minerva Group (2001), p. 159
— Acceptance of the Memorial to General Ulysses S. Grant (27 April 1922)
I have heard with admiring submission the experience of the lady who declared "that the sense of being perfectly well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquility which religion is powerless to bestow".
ralph waldo emerson— Social Aims
When the blessed Spirit, that bloweth where it listeth, visits you and stirs the plumage of the soul, seek no cowardly shelter from it, but fling yourself upon it, and, though its sweep be awful, you shall be sustained. Only do this, do all, not in presumptuous daring, but in divine submission; in dependence, not on any strength that can be spent, but on the ever-living stay of all that trust in Him.
james martineau— P. 321. (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895))
The disappearance of a sense of responsibility is the most far-reaching consequence of submission to authority.
stanley milgram— Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View (1974), ch. 1: The Dilemma of Obedience
....but I use the word (devotion) in a greater latitude so as to comprehend under it faith, hope, love, fear, trust, humility, submission, honour , reverence, adoration, thanksgiving in a word all that duty which we owe to God.
john norris— Reason and Religion; or, The Grounds and Measures of Devotion. Part I, Introduction, Section VIII.
Confront a child, a puppy, and a kitten with a sudden danger; the child will turn instinctively for assistance, the puppy will grovel in abject submission to the impending visitation, the kitten will brace its tiny body for a frantic resistance.
saki— The Achievement of the Cat
There is no happiness where there is no wisdom;No wisdom but in submission to the gods.Big words are always punished,And proud men in old age learn to be wise.
Sophocles— Line 1347, closing lines
When the sword is once drawn, the passions of men observe no bounds of moderation. The suggestions of wounded pride, the instigations of irritated resentment, would be apt to carry the States against which the arms of the Union were exerted, to any extremes necessary to avenge the affront or to avoid the disgrace of submission. The first war of this kind would probably terminate in a dissolution of the Union.
Alexander Hamilton— No. 16 : The Insufficiency of the Present Confederation to Preserve the Union
Women and men are divided by gender, made into the sexes as we know them, by the social requirements of heterosexuality, which institutionalizes male sexual dominance and female sexual submission.
catharine mackinnon— p. 533 (Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State: An Agenda for Theory (1982) Signs Vol. 7, No.3)
The range of socially permissible and desirable satisfaction is greatly enlarged, but through this satisfaction, the Pleasure Principle is reduced deprived of the claims which are irreconcilable with the established society. Pleasure, thus adjusted, generates submission.
herbert marcuse— p. 75 (One-Dimensional Man (1964))
Teach the child to respect that which is not respectable and you teach the child the first requirement of slavery: submission to unjust authority. Children are persons. They are small persons whose perfect souls have not yet been ground through the meat grinder of slavery.
gerry spence— Ch. 14 : The Magical Weapon : Withholding Permission to Be Defeated, p. 160
Arnold must have for us the something of the character of what we nowadays have taken to calling a "culture hero": that is, a man who gives himself in full submission and sacrifice to his historical moment in order to comprehend and control the elements which that moment brings.
Lionel Trilling— Introduction
Adoration, which is known as latria , in classical theology , is the worship and homage that is rightly offered to God alone. It is the manifestation of submission and acknowledgement of dependence appropriately shown towards the excellence of an uncreated divine person and to his absolue Lordship. It is the worship of the Creator that God alone deserves.
— St. Thomas Aquinas, in "Introduction to Mary: The Heart of Marian Doctrine and Devotion", p.13
The love of these things that are outside visible Christianity keeps me outside the Church... But it also seems to me that when one speaks to you of unbelievers who are in affliction and accept their affliction as a part of the order of the world, it does not impress you in the same way as if it were a question of Christians and of submission to the will of God. Yet it is the same thing.
— Simone Weil, Last letter to Father Joseph-Marie Perrin, from a refugee camp in Casablanca (26 May 1942), as translated in The Simone Weil Reader (1957) edited by George A. Panichas, p. 111.
The veil can be erotic but in a political context it is not; it is a kind of seal on property, a mark of submission.
— "Two Views of the Veil". PrintCulture. June 21, 2006.
"We have no other choice. Our submission would serve no end; if Germany is victorious, Belgium, whatever her attitude, will be annexed to the Reich. If die we must, better death with honour."
— Prime Minister de Broqueville of Belgium, responding to Germany's demand for Belgium's capitulation, 2 August 1914[ ]
Humility, what is it? It is a gracious gift of the Holy Ghost. It is the same disposition which the Psalmist called a " broken heart," and that consciousness of need which Jesus had in view when He said, "Blessed are the poor in spirit." So far as it has respect to God, it is that docility which is willing to learn what God teaches; that conscious penury, which is willing to accept whatever God proffers; that submission which is willing to do what God desires, and to endure whatever God deems needful.
— James Hamilton, p. 331. (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895))
A woman should learn in silence with full submission. I do not allow a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; instead, she is to be silent.
— Paul, 1 Timothy 2:11-12
True strength lies in submission which permits one to dedicate his life , through devotion, to something beyond himself.
— Henry Miller, in Strive to Love, Anticipate with Hope, Believe in Faith, p.29
Many people, no doubt, honestly believe that they are only giving away the interests of Czechoslovakia, whereas I fear we shall find that we have deeply compromised, and perhaps fatally endangered, the safety and even the independence of Great Britain and France.... I foresee and foretell that the policy of submission will carry with it restrictions upon the freedom of speech and debate in Parliament, on public platforms, and discussions in the Press.
— Winston Churchill, speech in Parliament attacking Prime Minister Chamberlain's policy of appeasing Hitler.[ ]
submission to duty and God gives the highest energy. He, who has done the greatest work on earth, said that He came down from heaven, not to do His own will, but the will of Him who sent Him, Whoever allies himself with God is armed with all the forces of the invisible world.
james freeman clarke— P. 202. (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895))
