Niger Innis

The purposeful restriction of knowledge has been at the heart of untold misery and hardship in this world. Serfs were kept illiterate so as to not jeopardize the feudal system. Slaves were kept in the dark on a variety of subjects so as to not provide them the possibility of escape.

American Activist

Denis Kearney

They are imported by companies, controlled as serfs, worked like slaves, and at last go back to China with all their earnings. They are in every place, they seem to have no sex. Boys work, girls work; it is all alike to them.

American Politician

Steve Jurvetson

The concept of a 'job' is pretty recent. If you go back a few hundred years, everyone was either a slave or a serf, or living off slave or serf labor to pursue science or philosophy or art.

American Businessman

Joseph Sobran

Most Americans aren't the sort of citizens the Founding Fathers expected; they are contented serfs. Far from being active critics of government, they assume that its might makes it right.

Tony Gilroy

Corporations are like countries now, there's a king, there are serfs, there's a court, basically everything but moats. They're feudal societies, and there are good ones and bad ones.

American Writer

Saul David

Even a moderniser like Alexander II - who emancipated the serfs in 1861 - had no intention of devolving real power.

British Historian

Julian Assange

Knowledge has always flowed upwards to bishops and kings, not down to serfs and slaves.

Australian Activist

Simon Sebag Montefiore

Alexander II really used autocracy well to negotiate the freeing of the serfs in 1861.

John Lothrop Motley

The crusades made great improvement in the condition of the serfs.

American Historian

Amitava Kumar

Indian Writer

Understand 'serf' as part of the feudal system where social hierarchy was strict.

Historical Context

'Serf' does not mean 'slave'; serfs had some rights and personal freedom.

Not Slaves

Serfs were tied to their lord's land, which they worked on to earn living rights.

Bound to Land

In modern context, 'serf' is used metaphorically to describe oppressive situations.

Non-literal Use

Use 'serf' to imply economic exploitation or lack of autonomy in the workplace.

Economic Dependence

Using 'serf' can express frustration with one's powerless or undervalued status.

Emotional Impact

 both about the big events of history and the small lives that inhabit those events. He focused on aristocrats, the class he knew best. The book only occasionally touches on the lives of the vast majority of the Russian population, who were peasants, or even serfs, farmers bound to serve the owners of the land on which they lived.

Why should you read...

 Two billion people. One third of the global population producing 5 percent of the wealth because they didn't get this change, because they kept treating their people like serfs instead of like shareholders of a common project.

Juan Enriquez: The...

 hi everybody I'm a soft Biderman can Marathi and you know a serf and I grew up in two smaller cities we embody Italy