|
|
 [Gorean Customs & Philosophies] [Regarding the Free] [Regarding Slaves]  "I once betrayed my codes," I said. "It is not my intention to do so again." I looked at her. `One does not know, truly what it is to stand, until one has fallen. Once one has fallen, then one knows, you see, what it is to stand." Page 340 - Beasts of Gor "In denying it we deny our nature. In betraying it we betray no one but ourselves. The master will never be happy until he is a master. The slave will never be happy until she is a slave. It is what we are." Page 159 - Explorers of Gor "Masculinity and femininity are complementary properties," I told her. "If a man wishes a woman to be more feminine, he must be more masculine. If a woman wishes a man to be more masculine, she must be more feminine." Page 205 - Explorers of Gor "Is it not safer to cower in the caves of lies than to stand upon the cliffs of truth, surveying the world? Yet when one stands in the sunlight, and feels the winds of reality, how dank and shameful seem the dark shelters of falsehood, and how foolish it seems then to have once feared daylight and fresh air." Page 103 - Fighting Slave of Gor "It is one thing to own a woman, and it is another to have her within the bonds of an excellent mastery." Page 465 - Magicians of Gor "The 97th Aphorism in the Codes I was taught," I said, "is in the form of a riddle: "What is invisible but more beautiful than diamonds?" "And the answer?" inquired Labenius. "That which is silent but deafens thunder." The men regarded one another. "And what is that?" asked Labenius. "The same," said I, "as that which depresses no scale but is weightier than gold." "And what is that?" asked Labenius. "Honor," I said." Page 304-305 - Vagabonds of Gor "You risked so much for a mere point of honor?" she asked. "There are no mere points of honor," I told her." Page 63 - Vagabonds of Gor "What of honor?" I asked. "An inconvenience," he said, "an impediment on the path to power." "You seem to me," I said, uncertainly, "one who might once have had honor." "I have outgrown it," he said. "The most dangerous lies," I said, "are those which we tell ourselves." Page 468 - Vagabonds of Gor "The Goreans, often so cruel to one another, tend to have an affection for wildlife and growing things, which they regard as free, and thereby deserving of great respect." Page 238 - Captive of Gor "But, why," I asked myself. "Should not, rather, one be more ashamed by deceit than the truth? Can there truly be a greater honor in hypocrisy than in honor? It does not seem so. We grow fond of our myths. Yet our myths are like walls of straw. Ultimately they must perish in the flames of truth." Page 257 - Guardsman of Gor "Invisible chains are those which weigh the most heavily." Page 9 - Tribesmen of Gor "Within the circle of each mans sword, therein lies an Ubar." Page 9 - Tribesmen of Gor "Steel is the coinage of the warrior, with it he purchases what pleases him." Page 9 - Tribesmen of Gor "Be strong and do as you will. The swords of others will set you your limits." Page 9 - Tribesmen of Gor "More real than the law is the heart." Tahari Proverb Page 146 - Tribesmen of Gor "The Perfect Bondage" is said to be one man and one woman, the complete master and the complete slave, ideal and perfect for each other's needs." Page 442 - Slave Girl of Gor "To share the kettle of a friend," I said, "is to dine with a Ubar." Page 349 - Blood Brothers of Gor "Gorean enemies, if skilled, often hold one another in high regard." Page 70 - Marauders of Gor "According to the Gorean way of thinking pity humiliates both he who pities and he who is pitied. According to the Gorean way, one may love but one may not pity." Page 31 - Outlaw of Gor "The morality of Earth, from the Gorean point of view, is a morality which would be viewed as more appropriate to slaves than free men. It would be seen in terms of the envy and resentment of inferiors for their superiors. It lays great stress on equalities and being humble and being pleasant and avoiding friction and being ingratiating and small. It is a morality in the best interest of slaves, who would be only too eager to be regarded as the equals of others. We are all the same. That is the hope of slaves; that is what it is in their interest to convince others of. The Gorean morality on the other hand is more one of inequalities, based on the assumption that individuals are not the same, but quite different in many ways. It might be said to be, though this is oversimple, a morality of masters. Guilt is almost unknown in Gorean morality, though shame and anger are not. Many Earth moralities encourage resignation and accommodation; Gorean morality is bent more toward conquest and defiance; many Earth moralities encourage tenderness, pity and gentleness, sweetness; Gorean morality encourages honour, courage, hardness and strength. To Gorean morality many Earth moralities might ask, "Why so hard?" To these Earth moralities, the Gorean ethos might ask, "Why so soft?" I have sometimes thought that the Goreans might do well to learn something of tenderness and, perhaps that those of Earth might do well to learn something of hardness. But I do not know how to live. I have sought the answers, but I have not found them. The morality of slaves says, "You are equal to me; we are both the same"; the morality of masters says, "We are not equal; we are not the same; become equal to me; then we will be the same." The morality of slaves reduces all to bondage; the morality of masters encourages all to attain, if they can, the heights of freedom. I know of no prouder, more self-reliant, more magnificent creature than the free Gorean, male or female; they are often touchy, and viciously tempered, but they are seldom petty or small; moreover they do not hate and fear their bodies or their instincts; when they restrain themselves it is a victory over titanic forces; not the consequence of a slow metabolism; but sometimes they do not restrain themselves; they do not assume that their instincts and blood are enemies and spies, saboteurs in the house of themselves; they know them and welcome them as part of their persons; they are as little suspicious of them as the cat of its cruelty, or the lion of its hunger; their desire for vengeance, their will to speak out and defend themselves, their lust, they regard as intrinsically and gloriously a portion of themselves as their hearing or their thinking. Many Earth moralities make people little; the object of Gorean morality, for all its faults, is to make people free and great. These objectives are quite different it is clear to see. Accordingly, one would expect that the implementing moralities would also be considerably different." Pages 8-9 - Marauders of Gor "You may judge and scorn Goreans as you wish. Know as well however that they judge and scorn you. They fulfill themselves as you do not. Hate them for their pride and power they will pity you for your shame and weakness." Page 11 - Beasts of Gor "Goreans care for their world. They love the sky, the plains, the sea, the rain in the summer, the snow in the winter. They will sometimes stand and watch clouds. The movement of grass in the wind is very beautiful to them. More than one Gorean poet has sung of the leaf of a Tur tree. I have known warriors who cared for the beauty of small flowers." Page 119 - Hunters of Gor "Do not ask the stones or the trees how to live, they can not tell you ; they do not have tongues; do not ask the wise man how to live for, if he knows , he will know he cannot tell you; if you would learn how to live , do not ask the question; its answer is not in the question but in the answer, which is not in words; do not ask how to live, but, instead, proceed to do so." Page 9 - Magicians of Gor "The Gorean woodsman, it might be mentioned, before he will strike a tree with an axe, speaks to the tree, begs its forgiveness and explains the use to which the wood will be put." Page 238 - Captive of Gor "The Gorean is suspicious of the stranger, particularly in the vicinity of his native walls. Indeed, in Gorean the same word is used for both stranger and enemy." Page 49 - Outlaw of Gor "How can I ever thank you?" he cried, stepping back, holding me, proudly, looking at me. "Between friends," I said, "thanks are neither needed, nor possible." Page 116 - Mercenaries of Gor "On this alien world a strong man may feel and express emotions, and that the hypocrisy of constraint is not honored on this planet." Page 25 - Tarnsman of Gor "Honor is important to Goreans, in a way that those of Earth might find it hard to understand; for example, those of Earth find it natural that men should go to war over matters of gold and riches, but not honor; the Gorean, contrariwise, is more willing to submit matters of honor to the adjudication of steel than he is matters of riches and gold; there is a simple explanation for this; honor is more important to him." Page 42 - Beasts of Gor  "There seem to be two major reasons why free women are seldom raped on Gor. First, it is thought that they, being free, are to be accorded the highest respect, and secondly, slave females are regarded as being much more desirable." Page 184 - Guardsman of Gor "The Gorean man, as a man, cheerfully and dutifully attends to the rescuing of his female in distress, but as a Gorean, as a true Gorean, he feels, perhaps justifiably and being somewhat less or more romantic than ourselves, that he should have something more for his pains than her kiss of gratitude and so, in typical Gorean fashion, puts his chain on the wench, claiming both her and her body as his payment." Page 138 - Priest Kings of Gor "More than one master, I suspect, has been enslaved by the beauty who kneels before him. It is one of the excruciating delights of the mastery to expose oneself fully to, and yet skirt, the dangers of the girl"s beauty, to keep oneself strong, to draw the absolute fullness of pleasure from her, and yet to resist her wiles, to get everything from her, and yet to keep her on her knees, completely." Page 36 - Slave Girl of Gor "Gorean men have a way of looking at women which is like stripping them and putting them to their feet." Page 267 - Slave Girl of Gor "Gorean men," I said, "you will learn, are less tolerant of pretense than the men of Earth." Page 202 - Beasts of Gor "Goreans are not men of Earth," I said. "They will have what they truly want from a woman, everything." Page 230 - Beasts of Gor "Gorean men do not surrender their birthright as males, their rightful dominance, their appropriate mastery. They do not choose to be dictated to by females." Page 51 - Magicians of Gor "I feared she might release in me things which I feared to understand, because I feared she might release in me something proud and savage, something which would be a stranger to apologies and pretenses, something long-forgotten and mighty, something which had been bred in caves and the hunt, something which might be called man." Page 111 - Fighting Slave of Gor "This harsh treatment, incidentally, when she is thought to deserve it, may even be inflicted on a free companion, in spite of the fact that she is free and usually much loved. According to the Gorean way of looking at things a taste of the slave ring is thought to be occasionally beneficial to all women, even the exalted free woman. Thus when she has been irritable or otherwise troublesome even a Free Companion may find herself at the foot of the couch looking forward to a pleasant night on the stones, stripped, with neither mat nor blanket, chained to the slave ring precisely as though she were a lowly slave girl. It is the Gorean way of reminding her, should she need to be reminded, that she, too, is a woman, and thus to be dominated, to be subject to men. Should she be tempted to forget this basic fact of Gorean life the slave ring set in the bottom of each Gorean couch is there to refresh her memory. Gor is a mans world." Page 67 - Priest Kings of Gor "Free women, incidentally, among the Wagon Peoples are not permitted to wear silk: it is claimed by those of the Wagons, delightfully I think, that any women who loves the feel of silk on her body is, in the secrecy of her heart and blood , a slave girl, whether or not some master has yet forced her to don the collar." Page 58 - Nomads of Gor "Goreans, in their simplistic fashion, often contend, categorically, that man is naturally free and woman is naturally slave. But even for them the issues are far more complex than these simple formulations would suggest. For example, there is no higher person, nor one more respected, than the Gorean free woman. Goreans do believe, however, that every woman has a natural master or set of masters, with respect to whom she could not help but be a complete and passionate slave girl. These men occur in her dreams and fantasies. She lives in terror that she might meet one in real life." Page 311 - Hunters of Gor "The principle he had alluded to pertains to conduct in a free woman which is taken as sufficient to warrant her reduction to slavery. The most common application of this principle occurs in areas such as fraud or theft. Other applications may occur, for example, in cases of indigence and vagrancy. Prostitution, rare on Gor because of female slaves, is another case. The women are taken, enslaved, cleaned up and controlled. Indulgence in sensual dance is another case. Sensuous dance is almost always performed by slaves on Gor. A free woman who performs such dancing publicly is almost begging for the collar. In some cities the sentence of bondage is mandatory for such a woman." Page 372 - Renegades of Gor "Any free woman who couches with another's slave or readies for such, becomes, by law, herself a slave and the property of said slaves owner." Page 7 - Magicians of Gor "In the North my blood had found itself, learning itself; in the north I had learned strength, and how to stand alone. I thought of the Kurri. They were terrible foes. Suddenly, incredibly, I felt love for them. I recollected the head of the giant Kur, mounted on its stake, in the ruins of the hall of Svein Blue Tooth. One cannot be weak who meets such beasts. I laughed at the weakness instilled into the men of earth. Only men who are strong, without weakness, can meet such Beasts. One must match them in strength, in intellect, in terribleness, in ferocity. In the north I had grown strong. I suddenly realized the supreme power of the united Gorean will, not divided against itself, not weak, not crippled like the wills of earth. I felt a surge of power, of unprecedented, unexpected joy. I had discovered what it was to be Gorean. I had discovered what is was, truly, to be male, to be a man. I was Gorean." Page 290 - Marauders of Gor "You were not struck for such an absurd reason," I said, "You are, after all a free woman, and free women are entitled to insult, and attempt to demean and destroy men. It is one of their freedoms, unless men, of course, should decide to take it from them. You were struck rather, because you were attempting to manipulate me." She nodded, putting her head down." Page 422 - Mercenaries of Gor "The other girls, resenting the tunic she had been given, had stripped her. Svein Blue Tooth had laughed, masters do not interfere in the squabbles of slaves." Page 289 - Marauders of Gor "Tears are not unbecoming to the soldier," said Callimachus. "The soldier is a man of deep passions, and emotion. Many men cannot even understand his depths. Do not fear your currents and your powers. In the soldier are flowers and storms. Each is a part of him, and each is real. Accept both. Deny neither." Page 23 - Guardsman of Gor "Do not attempt to interfere in the relationship between a man and his slave," he said. "That relationship is absolute." Page 172 - Kajira of Gor "Slave girls fear free women muchly. It is almost as if there was some unspoken war between them, almost as if they might be mortal enemies. In such a war, or such an enmity, of course, the slave girl is completely at the mercy of the free person; she is only slave. One of the great fears of a slave girl is that she will be sold to a woman. Free women treat their female slaves with incredible hatred and cruelty. Why this is I do not know. Some say it is because they, the free women, envy the girls their collars and wish that they, too, were collared, and at the complete mercy of masters." Page 154 - Marauders of Gor "They are different men. They are not earthlings. They are Goreans. They are strong, they are hard, and they will conquer you. For a man of earth, you might never be a woman. For a man of Gor, I assure you, my dear, sooner or later you will be." Page 12 - Tribesmen of Gor Next Page [Gorean Customs & Philosophies] [Regarding the Free] [Regarding Slavery] |
