“The link between literacy and revolutions is a well-known historical phenomenon. The three great revolutions of modern European history -- the English, the French and the Russian -- all took place in societies where the rate of literacy was approaching 50 per cent. Literacy had a profound effect on the peasant mind and community. It promotes abstract thought and enables the peasant to master new skills and technologies, Which in turn helps him to accept the concept of progress that fuels change in the modern world.”
― Orlando Figes, A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891 - 1924

“When a peasant begins to feel the need for instruction, he usually becomes fiercely calculating.”
― Émile Zola, The Fortune of the Rougons

“What infinite heart's-ease
Must kings neglect, that private men enjoy!
And what have kings, that privates have not too,
Save ceremony, save general ceremony?
And what art thou, thou idle ceremony?
What kind of god art thou, that suffer'st more
Of mortal griefs than do thy worshippers?
What are thy rents? what are thy comings in?
O ceremony, show me but thy worth!
What is thy soul of adoration?
Art thou aught else but place, degree and form,
Creating awe and fear in other men?
Wherein thou art less happy being fear'd
Than they in fearing.
What drink'st thou oft, instead of homage sweet,
But poison'd flattery? O, be sick, great greatness,
And bid thy ceremony give thee cure!
Think'st thou the fiery fever will go out
With titles blown from adulation?
Will it give place to flexure and low bending?
Canst thou, when thou command'st the beggar's knee,
Command the health of it? No, thou proud dream,
That play'st so subtly with a king's repose;
I am a king that find thee, and I know
'Tis not the balm, the sceptre and the ball,
The sword, the mace, the crown imperial,
The intertissued robe of gold and pearl,
The farced title running 'fore the king,
The throne he sits on, nor the tide of pomp
That beats upon the high shore of this world,
No, not all these, thrice-gorgeous ceremony,
Not all these, laid in bed majestical,
Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave,
Who with a body fill'd and vacant mind
Gets him to rest, cramm'd with distressful bread;
Never sees horrid night, the child of hell,
But, like a lackey, from the rise to set
Sweats in the eye of Phoebus and all night
Sleeps in Elysium; next day after dawn,
Doth rise and help Hyperion to his horse,
And follows so the ever-running year,
With profitable labour, to his grave:
And, but for ceremony, such a wretch,
Winding up days with toil and nights with sleep,
Had the fore-hand and vantage of a king.
The slave, a member of the country's peace,
Enjoys it; but in gross brain little wots
What watch the king keeps to maintain the peace,
Whose hours the peasant best advantages.”
― William Shakespeare, Henry V

“The peasant is the only species of human being who doesn't like the country and never looks at it.”
― Jules Renard

“And then there was pain and blood and tears, all those things that cause suffering and revolt, the killing of Françoise, the killing of Fouan, vice triumphing, and the stinking, bloodthirsty peasants, vermin who disgrace and exploit the earth. But can you really know? Just as the frost that burns the crops, the hail that chops them down, the thunderstorms which batter them are all perhaps necessary, maybe blood and tears are needed to keep the world going. And how important is human misery when weighed against the mighty mechanism of the stars and the sun? What does God care for us? We earn our bread only by dint of a cruel struggle, day in, day out. And only the earth is immortal, the Great Mother from whom we spring and to whom we return, love of whom can drive us to crime and through whom life is perpetually preserved for her own inscrutable ends, in which even our wretched degraded nature has its part to play.”
― Émile Zola, The Earth

“The peasants of all lands recognize power and they salute it, whether it's good or evil.”
― Andrei Codrescu, The Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara & Lenin Play Chess

“You idolize peasants. You look up to island savages living “at one with Nature,” I ask you to see what happened to Margaret Mead, and how the Polynesians punked her—most of the things she wrote about their views on life, about their sexual freedom, was nonsense they made up to make her look foolish. In same way the fools like Gimbutas and others who believe that mankind at some remote point lived under a benevolent matriarchy, again, “at one with Nature,” in balance with the needs of the soil and such: sheer nonsense. Everywhere historians, archaeologists find what we thought was matriarchy was really no such thing.”
― Bronze Age Pervert, Bronze Age Mindset

“These romantic visions of the peasantry were constantly undone by contact with reality, often with devastating consequences for their bearers. The populists, who invested much of themselves in their conception of the peasants, suffered the most in this respect, since the disintegration of that conception threatened to undermine not only their radical beliefs but also their own self-identity.”
― Orlando Figes, A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891 - 1924

“I wouldn't worry about it too much, son. Certainly not about the peasants and the servants. They don't feel things as we do.”
“They're human.”
“Barely. They might as well be another species. What would happen without us to keep them in check? They wouldn't work the land. They would be at each other's throat if we weren't there to restrain them. Face it, they are driven by their instincts. Granted, that is a generalization, and there are some individuals who rise above that. Personally I think that is how the nobility originated. Even today, with the help of the Gods, hard work and some luck such a man can rise above his station. But as a group…”
― Andrew Ashling, The Invisible Chains - Part 2: Bonds of Fear

“Don’t ever eat your bread without remembering the hardworking peasants!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“The 'noble savage' whom the Populists had seen in the simple peasant was, as Gorky now concluded, no more than a romantic illusion. And the more he experienced the everyday life of the peasant, the more he denounced them as savage and barbaric.”
― Orlando Figes, A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891 - 1924

“The master and mistress of the house and the rest of the Blood -even the Crux himself- brought our food, poured the wine, did our bidding. The centerpiece was a roasted stag. crowned with gilded antlers and stuffed with songbirds; they had hunted well. We were forbidden to kill the deer that fattened on our coleworts and stole our grain, and the venison tasted all the better for the salt of revenge.”
― Sarah Micklem, Firethorn

“What had been a region of model farming became almost a desert, for more than half the population was exiled or sent to concentration camps. The young people left the villages, the boys to go to the factories if they could get jobs, or to become vagabonds if they couldn’t.
***
An echo of the tragic fate of Russia’s German Protestant population reached the world when the Mennonites flocked to Moscow and sought permission to leave the country. Some of these Germans had tried to obey the government and had formed collective farms, only to have them liquidated as Kulak collectives. Being first-class farmers, they had committed the crime of making even a Kolkhoz productive and prosperous.
Others had quite simply been expropriated from their individual holdings. All were in despair. Few were allowed to leave Russia. They were sent to Siberia to die, or herded into slave labor concentration camps. The crime of being good farmers was unforgivable, and they must suffer for this sin.
***
Cheat or be cheated, bully or be bullied, was the law of life. Only the German minority with their strong religious and moral sense—the individual morality of the Protestant as opposed to the mass subservience demanded by the Greek Orthodox Church and the Soviet Government—retained their culture and even some courage under Stalin’s Terror.”
― Freda Utley, Lost Illusion

“Only a few miles from any city centre one would find oneself already in the backwoods, where there were bandits living in the forests, where roads turned into muddy bogs in spring, and where the external signs of life in the remote hamlets had remained essentially unchanged since the Middle Ages. Yet, despite living so close to the peasants, the educated classes of the cities knew next to nothing about their world. It was as exotic and alien to them as the natives of Africa were to their distant colonial rulers.”
― Orlando Figes, A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891 - 1924

“There is no sadder symbol of the crippling poverty in which millions of peasants were forced to live than the image of a peasant and his son struggling to drag a plough through the mud.”
― Orlando Figes, A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891 - 1924

“If we can give to urban people the peasant's love of nature and their deep understanding on the matter of nature's importance, the salvation of our Earth will be easier!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“Where did the Communists get their support? From the "great majority’"—the poor peasants, ready to die for them. Why? Peasants were not interested in revolution, Marxism, or theories. They wanted peace, rice, parcels of land, relief from their agonies, freedom from crushing debts, usury and taxes, and a chance for their children to learn to read and write.”
― Edgar Snow

“It can be so difficult to train up the peasants,” she said, pretending to commiserate, her voice heavy with irony. “They find it so hard to project the kind of snobbery that comes so naturally to their betters.”
― Caitlin Crews, The Replacement Wife

“The greatest sorrow in the life of a peasant is that his donkey is lost. And the greatest happiness is that he finds it back.”
― Khalid Farooq

“Even peasants can build a cathedral.”
― Daryl Gregory, Afterparty

“Avenant gave a slanting smile.  “Admit it, peasants… Could the usurper wearing my crown have pulled that off?”
― Cassandra Gannon, Wicked Ugly Bad

“He watched the villagers at their work and tried to get to know their ways: how they made their stores and divided them for consumption, how they bred their animals and made tools for the field, plows, harrows, rakes, shovels, as well as weapons, tubs, baskets and the like. He watched them making repairs and improving their houses with saws, hammers, and axes, or bringing wood to their homes by the easier method of using sleighs, or satisfying the other necessities of life in their few trades.”
― Adalbert Stifter, Witiko

“What I’m talking about is the order of chosen men who inherit power. From Pharaohs and kings to bankers and executives. Their path is paved for them, and life is but a child’s lavish play pen. It used to be that the peasants would toil in meaningless servitude, unable to see the big picture, without a chance to break the cycle. Now we have computers to help us do our research. Suddenly, the rhythms and patterns of oppression and deceit since time immemorial come into startling focus.”
― Nick Drnaso, Sabrina

“We are the marching millions.
Our journey never ends.
The more we march towards hope
the more our hope moves
further away from us.”
― Bhuwan Thapaliya

“Stability, the deep, cushiony ability to take blows, and yet to keep things as they were, came from the special place of these people on the land. The peasants were agriculturalists; their livelihood sprang from the earth. Americans they met later would have called them "farmers", but that word had a different meaning in Europe. The bonds that held these men to their acres were not simply the personal ones of the husbandman who temporarily mixes his sweat with the soil. The ties were deeper, more intimate. For the peasant was part of a community and the community was held to the land as a whole.”
― Oscar Handlin , Children of the Uprooted

“The majority of the peasants take little or no interest in the problems of communism or anti-communism. They are direct victims of the war, and consequently they welcome every effort in the direction of ending the war.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire

“The peasants are not concerned about ideology: no one can frighten them with stories of the evils of communism. With their property already destroyed, they do not fear that the Communists will take their property. And if one speaks to them of freedom and democracy, they say, "Of what use is freedom and democracy if one is not alive to enjoy them?" So it is clear that the first problem of the Vietnamese peasant is a problem of life itself: how to survive in the midst of all the forces that threaten them; how to cling to life itself.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire

“The spirit of patriotism among the peasants is very high. They are not informed about world history or ideological struggles; what they see is a large force of white Westerners doing their best to kill their fellow countrymen, many of whom previously fought against the French. The peasants do not see the victims of the American military as dead Communists, but as dead patriots.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire

“The Russian and non-Russian peasants, probably four-fifths of the total Soviet population in 1929, were herded into collective farms, without anyone truly knowing how collectivized agriculture was supposed to work.”
― Kees Boterbloem, Life in Stalin's Soviet Union

“Almost overnight, Soviet peasants needed to become factory workers and miners. Industrialization was to be financed by domestic means, given the absence of any meaningful foreign investments in the country; this meant that the peasantry that did not join the industrial workforce had to foot much of the bill. Herding them into collective farms seemed a promising way to force them to pay this bill. Stalin would state, not long after he unleashed the full brunt of his modernization program, that the Soviet Union was at least half a century behind the industrialized world, and needed to catch up with it within a decade. Every sacrifice toward this goal was justified. This, then, was the broader context in which Soviet daily life played itself out between 1928 and 1933.”
― Kees Boterbloem, Life in Stalin's Soviet Union