The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest / The writings of philosophers, poets, novelists, social reformers, and others who have voiced the struggle against social injustice; selected from twenty-five languages; covering a period of five thousand years

by Unknown

By Xenophon

(Greek historian, B.C. Fourth Century)

If you perfume a slave and a freeman, the difference of their birth produces none in the smell; and the scent is perceived as soon in the one as the other; but the odor of honorable toil, as it is acquired with great pains and application, is ever sweet and worthy of a brave man.

By Dante Alighieri

(Italian epic poet, 1265-1321)

What! You say a horse is noble because it is good in itself, and the same you say of a falcon or a pearl; but a man shall be called noble because his ancestors were so? Not with words, but with knives must one answer such a beastly notion.

By Omar Khayyam

(Persian poet, Eleventh Century)

In this world he who possesses a morsel of bread, and some nest in which to shelter himself, who is master or slave of no man, tell that man to live content; he possesses a very sweet existence.