Peasant

A peasant is a member of a traditional class of farmers, either laborers or owners of small farms. Its plural form is peasants. Peasants form the main labor force in agriculture and horticulture. It also means a country person, an uncouth, crude or ill-bred person.

A

Turkey's true master is the peasant.
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, quoted in in Thomas Chi, U.S.A. Toddler Importing as a Turkish Businessman, OilUSA.Co, 1 June 2011, p. 27

Patient like a peasant.
- W. H. Auden, "Voltaire at Ferney" in Another Time (1940)

B

They eat the dainty food of famous chefs with the same pleasure with which they devour gross peasant dishes, mostly composed of garlic and tomatoes, or fisherman's octopus and shrimps, fried in heavily scented olive oil on a little deserted beach.
- Luigi Barzini, in Italians, Simon and Schuster, 1964, p. 6

A peasant becomes fond of his pig and is glad to salt away its pork. What is significant, and is so difficult for the urban stranger to understand, is that the two statements are connected by an and not by a but.
- John Berger, in Chris Philo, Chris Wilbert Animal Spaces, Beastly Places, Routledge, 2 August 2004, p. 116

My wife was the first art collector in the family, and I didn't be|come interested until around 1973. The first important artwork we bought was a Van Gogh drawing of two peasant houses in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer.
- Eli Broad, in Eli Broad: Blame My Wife, 22 September 2011

You know most of the food that Americans hold so dear - things like hamburgers and hot dogs - were road food, but even before they were road food, they were peasant food.
- Alton Brown, in I Love Veggie Burgers!, Magic 949, 7 September 2012

C

There are no bridges in folk songs because the peasants died building them.
- Eugene Chadbourne, in Mark Michaels The Billboard book of rock arranging, Billboard Books, 1 May 1990, p. 192

D

If ever there was a slamming of the door in the face of constructive investigation, it is the word miracle. To a medieval peasant, a radio would have seemed like a miracle.
- Richard Dawkins, in Hal Marcovitz Teaching Intelligent Design, ABDO, 1 January 2009, p. 83

E

F

There aren't many great passages written about food but I love one by George Millar, who worked for the SOE in the second world war and wrote a book called 'Horned Pigeon.' He had been on the run and hadn't eaten for a week, and his description of the cheese fondue he smells in the peasant kitchen of a house in eastern France is unbelievable.
- Sebastian Faulks, in Dr John Briffa assesses Sebastian Faulks' shopping basket, The Guardian, 13 September 2009

G

There can be no permanent disfranchised peasantry in the United States. Freedom can never yield its fullness of blessings so long as the law or its administration places the smallest obstacle in the pathway of any virtuous citizen.
- James A. Garfield, inaugural address (4 March 1881)

He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in Quotes about Home, Quotations Book, p. 6

I have drawn into myself so much that I literally do not see any other people anymore-- excepting the peasants with whom I have direct contact, since I paint them.
- Vincent van Gogh, in Ingo F. Walther Van Gogh, Barnes & Noble, 1 January 1999

I grew up in a family of peasants, and it was there that I saw the way that, for example, our wheat fields suffered as a result of dust storms, water erosion and wind erosion; I saw the effect of that on life- on human life.
- Mikhail Gorbachev, in Air Date: September 15, 2000 : Gorbachev on the Environment, Living on Earth, 15 September 2000

And it is practically the same in the case of the four or five million poor peasants in France, and also for Switzerland, Belgium, Holland, and two of the Scandinavian countries. Everywhere small and medium sized industry prevails.
- Herman Gorter, in Herman Gorter, Open Letter to Comrade Lenin, 1920, Marxists.org

The revolution in Russia was terrible for the proletariat in the long years of its development and it is terrible now, after the victory. But at the actual time of revolution it was easy, and this was due to the peasants.
- Herman Gorter, in Herman Gorter Open letter to comrade Lenin (1921), Libcom.org

As farmers or owners, the poor peasants possess a piece of land. The excellent means of transport enables them often to sell their goods. At the very worst they can mostly provide their own food.
- Herman Gorter, in "Herman Gorter, Open Letter to Comrade Lenin, 1920"

Because in Russia you were able to triumph with the help of a large class of poor peasants, you represent things in such a way, as if we in Western Europe are also going to have that help.
- Herman Gorter, in “Herman Gorter, Open Letter to Comrade Lenin, 1920”

For the Russian masses, the proletarians, knew for certain, and already saw during the war, and in part before their very eyes, that the peasants would soon be on their side.
- Herman Gorter, in “Herman Gorter, Open Letter to Comrade Lenin, 1920”

To judge from all Communist papers, magazines and brochures, and from all public assemblies, one might even surmise that a revolt of the poor peasants in Western Europe might break out at any moment!
- Herman Gorter, in “Herman Gorter, Open Letter to Comrade Lenin, 1920”

H

Like medieval peasants, computer manufacturers and millions of users are locked in a seemingly eternal lease with their evil landlord, who comes around every two years to collect billions of dollars of taxes in return for mediocre services.
- Mark Harris, in Nmap presentation at SANS Network Security 99, Seclists.org, 4 October 1999

I

J

I'm a peasant
I'm the muzhik
A pest you're destined to play the music
And yes it's pleasant to say it's beauty I'm
Indebted to rest respecting it truly
- Criss Jami, in Diotima, Battery, Electric Personality, Criss Jami, 9 December 2013, p. 7

K

L

This world is run by people who know how
to do things. They know how things work.
They are equipped. Up there, there's a layer
of people who run everything. But we -
we're just peasants. We don't understand
what's going on, and we can't do anything.
- Doris Lessing, in Sheldon Rampton, John Stauber Trust Us, We're Experts PA: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles with Your Future, Penguin, 14 January 2002, p. 7

The dwarf barefooted, chanting
Behind the oxen by the lake,
Stepping lightly and lazily among the thorntrees
Dusky and dazed with sunlight, half awake;
The women breaking stones upon the highway,
Walking erect with burdens on their heads,
One body growing in another body,
Creation touching verminous straw beds.
Across scorched hills and trampled crops
The soldiers straggle by.
History staggers in their wake.
The peasants watch them die.
- Alun Lewis, "The Peasants" in Ha! Ha! Among the Trumpets (1944)

M

In verity we are the poor. This humanity we would claim for ourselves is the legacy, not only of the Enlightenment, but of the thousands and thousands of European peasants and poor townspeople who came here bringing their humanity and their sufferings with them. It is the absence of a stable upper class that is responsible for much of the vulgarity of the American scene. Should we blush before the visitor for this deficiency?
- Mary Mccarthy, in Quotes about Poverty and The Poor, Quotations Book, p. 14

We forgave, followed and accepted because we liked the way he looked. And he had a pretty wife. Camelot was fun, even for the peasants, as long as it was televised to their huts.
- Joe McGinniss, in The language lens, Prentice-Hall, 1973, p. 70

Patton was living in the Dark Ages. Soldiers were peasants to him. I didn't like that attitude.
- Bill Mauldin, in George L. Hand World War Ii, To The Greatest Generation/A Poetic History of the War's Duration, iUniverse, 3 January 2012, p. 59

I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.
- Michel de Montaigne, in Lloyd Albert Johnson A Toolbox for Humanity: More Than 9000 Years of Thought, Trafford Publishing, 2003, p. 123

N

Today the large organization is lord and master, and most of its employees have been desensitized much as were the medieval peasants who never knew they were serfs.
- Ralph Nader, in Iam A. Freeman Seeds of Revolution: A Collection of Axioms, Passages and Proverbs ..., Volume 1, iUniverse, 26 March 2014, p. 366

O

P

All men are by nature equal, made all of the same earth by one Workman; and however we deceive ourselves, as dear unto God is the poor peasant as the mighty prince.
- Plato, in Pastor Stephen Kyeyune The Legacy of a Hero; Life Lived from the Christian Prospective, AuthorHouse, 6 February 2013

I should consent to breed under pressure, if I were convinced in any way of the reasonableness of reproducing the species. But my nerves and the nerves of any woman I could live with three months, would produce only a victim... lacking in impulse, a mere bundle of discriminations. If I were wealthy I might subsidize a stud of young peasants, or a tribal group in Tahiti.
- Ezra Pound, in Quotes by Pound Ezra, Quotations Book, p. 7

Q

R

Only in America do these peasants, our mothers, get their hair dyed platinum at the age of sixty, and walk up and down Collins Avenue in Florida in pedal pushers and mink stoles / and with opinions on every subject under the sun. It isn't their fault they were given a gift like speech / look, if cows could talk, they would say things just as idiotic.
- Philip Roth, in Quotes about Mothers, Quotations Book. P.8

S

The benefit of rich families putting their child through Harvard is always going to exist. But it's quite evident that there are 700 million peasants in China who are never going to go to Harvard.
- Michael J. Saylor, in Alisha Azevedo A Dot-Com Entrepreneur's Wild Ambition: Drive Education Costs to Zero, The Chronicler of Higher Education, 11 November 2012

Scratch a Russian you'll find a Tatar. Scratch a Russian worker and you'll find a peasant.
- Old saying, in Caradog Vaughan James Soviet Socialist Realism: Origins and Theory, MacMillan, 1973, p. 48

After we passed a few more houses, the street ceased to maintain any pretense of urbanity, like a man returning to his little village who, piece by piece, strips off his Sunday best, slowly changing back into a peasant as he gets closer to his home.
- Bruno Schulz, in Bruno Schulz, Jonathan Safran Foer, David Goldfarb The street of crocodiles and other stories, Penguin Books, 25 March 2008, p. 5

Commerce has set the mark of selfishness, the signet of its all-enslaving power, upon a shining ore, and called it gold: before whose image bow the vulgar great, the vainly rich, the miserable proud, the mob of peasants, nobles, priests, and kings, and with blind feelings reverence the power that grinds them to the dust of misery.
- Percy Bysshe Shelley, in Queen Mab, knarf.english
The Nazis and Soviets both had a powerful story about who was to blame for the Great Depression (Jewish capitalists or just capitalists) and authentically radical approaches to political economy. The Nazis and Soviets not only rejected the legal and political form of the postwar order but also questioned its economic and social basis. They reached back to the economic and social roots of postwar Europe, and reconsidered the lives and roles of the men and women who worked the land. In the Europe of the 1930s, peasants were still the majority in most countries, and arable soil was a precious natural resource, bringing energy for economies still powered by animals and humans. Calories were counted, but for rather different reasons than they are counted now: economic planners had to make sure that populations could be kept fed, alive, and productive. Most of the states of Europe had no prospect of social transformation, and thus little ability to rival or counter the Nazis and the Soviets. Poland and other new east European states had tried land reform in the 1920s, but their efforts had proven insufficient. Landlords lobbied to keep their property, and banks and states were miserly with credit to peasants. The end of democracy across the region (except in Czechoslovakia) at first brought little new thinking on economic matters. Authoritarian regimes in Poland, Hungary, and Romania had less hesitation about jailing opponents and better recourse to fine phrases about the nation. But none seemed to have much to offer in the way of a new economic policy during the Great Depression.
- Timothy D. Snyder, Bloodlands: Hitler Between Europe and Stalin (2010)

The earth is the earth as a peasant sees it, the world is the world as a duchess sees it, and anyway a duchess would be nothing if the earth was not there as the peasant sees it.
- Gertrude Stein, in Everybody's Autobiography, Random House LLC, 13 March 2013, p. 71

In the middle classes the gifted son of a family is always the poorest - usually a writer or artist with no sense for speculation - and in a family of peasants, where the average comfort is just over penury, the gifted son sinks also, and is soon a tramp on the roadside. -

In the middle classes the gifted son of a family is always the poorest - usually a writer or artist with no sense for speculation - and in a family of peasants, where the average comfort is just over penury, the gifted son sinks also, and is soon a tramp on the roadside.
- J.M. Synge, in Beckett and Bion: The (Im)Patient Voice in Psychotherapy and Literature, Karnac Books, 2013, p. 113

T

Soldiers and peasants lived together on friendly terms; they knew each other and their everyday routines, and trusted each other; they shook their heads together over the war.
- Ernst Toller, in Unknown Germany, 1948, p. 121

If the French noblesse had been capable of playing cricket with their peasants, their chateaux would never have been burnt.
- G. M. Trevelyan, in J. A. Mangan Pleasure, Profit, Proselytism: British Culture and Sport at Home and Abroad, 1700-1914, Psychology Press, 1988, p. 259

U

Every marriage tends to consist of an aristocrat and a peasant. Of a teacher and a learner.
- John Updike, in Quotes about Marriage, Quotations Book, p. 47

V

W

The sole and basic source of our strength is the solidarity of workers, peasants and the intelligentsia, the solidarity of the nation, the solidarity of people who seek to live in dignity, truth, and in harmony with their conscience.
- Lech Walesa, in Suzanne McIntire, William E. Burns Speeches in World History, Infobase Publishing, 1 January 2009, p. 504

That a peasant may become king does not render the kingdom democratic.
- Woodrow Wilson, in Tom Frank One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism and the End of Economic Democracy, Random House, 30 September 2010, p. 49

X

Y

I heard so many stories from Gaomi's peasants that I had an irrepressible urge to write them down. Today, Gaomi's peasants know that they have become famous around the world through my writings, but I think they are a little puzzled by this.
- , in Illaria Maria Sala A Complicated Honor, The Wall Street Journal, 15 October 2012

Z

There is a serious tendency toward capitalism among the well-to-do peasants. This tendency will become rampant if we in the slightest way neglect political work among the peasant during the co-operative movement and for a very long period and after.
- Mao Zedong, in Tse-tung Mao, Zedong Mao Quotations from Chairman Mao Tsetung, China Books, 1990, p. 32

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