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About this quote

What does it mean?
Money creates a system of slavery without personal ties, making it colder than old forms of bondage.
In plain terms
Money is impersonal slavery.
What can you take from it?
Recognize how money can dominate lives.

Where it applies

  • economic policy
  • labor rights
  • personal finance

Putting it to work

  • review spending habits
  • support ethical businesses
  • advocate for fair wages

Questions to consider

  • How does money affect your freedom?
  • What systems feel impersonal in your life?

Another view

Not all financial relationships are exploitative.

More from Leo Tolstoy

  1. Life consists in penetrating the unknown, and fashioning our actions in accord with the new knowledge thus acquired.

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  2. Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in the attainment of the historic, universal, aims of humanity.

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  3. Laws are rules, made by people who govern by means of organized violence, for non-compliance with which the non-complier is subjected to blows, to loss of libe…

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