The social principles of Christianity preach cowardice, self-contempt, abasement, submission, humility, in a word all the qualities of the canaille. -
Karl Marx
There exists, at the bottom of all abasement and misfortune, a last extreme which rebels and joins battle with the forces of law and respectability in a desperate struggle, waged partly by cunning and partly by violence, at once sick and ferocious, in which it attacks the prevailing social order with the pin-pricks of vice and the hammer-blows of crime. -
Victor Hugo
Abasement, degradation is simply the manner of life of the man who has refused to be what it is his duty to be. -
Jose Ortega Y Gasset
The abominable doctrine taught in the pulpit, the press, in books and elsewhere, is that the whole duty of women is self-abasement and self-sacrifice. I do not believe subjection is woman's duty any more than it is the duty of a man to be under subjection to another man or many men. Women have the right of independence, of conscience, of will and of responsibility. -
Anna Howard Shaw
