Voltaire - Susan B Anthony - Percy Bysshe Shelley - Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels - Jean-Jacques Rousseau - Franz Kafka - Fred Dibnah TV - Michael Wood TV - Ovid - Uprising TV - Tony Robinson TV -
It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere. Voltaire
The fact is, women are in chains, and their servitude is all the more debasing because they do not realize it. Susan B Anthony
Shake your chains to earth like dew. Which in sleep had fallen on you. Ye are many, they are few. Percy Busshe Shelley, The Mask of Anarchy
The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.
WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE! Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto
Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract
It is often better [variation: safer] to be in chains than to be free. Franz Kafka, The Trial
Chains made in the Black Country were renowned for their quality all over the world. At the end of the nineteenth century 90% of all the chain workshops in England and Wales were here in the black country. Fred Dibnah’s Made in Britain: Engines at Work, BBC 2005
Our engine is actually steered by chains. We’ve come here to the Black Country Museum to see a gentleman making chains in exactly the same way as this chain would have been made in 1912, without any fancy electric welding or anything like that. Fred Dibnah’s Made in Britain: Chains and Copper
In the eighteenth century chains had many different uses ... As capitalism expanded it co-opted the world for its workforce and it didn’t care how it got them. Michael Wood, The Great British Story: A People’s History 7/8: Industry and Empire, BBC 2012
There was still a huge gulf between rich and poor. In 1910 the chain makers of the black country went on strike ... The most exploited were the women. Michael Wood, The Great British Story 8/8: A People’s History
Happy is the man who has broken the chains which hurt the mind, and has given up worrying once and for all. Ovid
You know what? They were good fires. They were fires of freedom. People were breaking the chains. Uprising III: The Front Line, BBC 2021
Chainmaking: Patience say that from the age of ten she worked relentlessly and hardly ever had a day off … A new minimum wage, which meant that chainmaking companies had to pay their workers a whole penny more, an increase of over 50%. So how did the owners respond? Easy. They just refused to pay it … In 1910 the National Federation of Women Workers called a strike. In retaliation the employers locked the chainmakers out … Patience aged 79 joined the march … And after a ten-week standoff the employers finally caved in. Tony Robinson’s History of Britain s2e2: Edwardians, Channel 5 2022