Popular quotes about Slavery! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
Slavery's crime against humanity did not begin when one people defeated and enslaved its enemies (though of course this was bad enough), but when slavery became an institution in which some men were 'born' free and others slave, when it was forgotten that it was man who had deprived his fellow-men of freedom, and when the sanction for the crime was attributed to nature.
Hannah ArendtHalf the country seceded from the other half when Abraham Lincoln was elected because half the country couldn't abide his position on slavery. You would think 150 years later this had all become pretty historically incontestable. Yet millions continue to contest it in the face of history. Rather the denial of slavery and all its monstrous repercussions defines to one twin America what the country is and means, and therein is the DNA of those "alternative facts" that people believe when they can't stand to believe the truth.
Steve EricksonEvery year white people add 100 years to how long ago slavery was. I've heard educated white people say, 'slavery was 400 years ago.' No it very wasn't. It was 140 years ago...that's two 70-year-old ladies living and dying back to back. That's how recently you could buy a guy.
Louis C. K.Those who advocate either slavery or income taxation should be ashamed of themselves. Genuine freedom entails the abolition, not the reform, of income taxation and the IRS, just as genuine freedom entailed the abolition, not the reform, of slavery.
Jacob G. HornbergerI expose slavery in this country, because to expose it is to kill it. Slavery is one of those monsters of darkness to whom the light of truth is death.
Frederick DouglassSlavery is slavery. The chain of gold is quite as bad as the chain of iron. Is there a way out?
Swami VivekanandaSlavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature - opposition to it is his love of justice. These principles are an eternal antagonism; and when brought into collision so fiercely, as slavery extension brings them, shocks and throes and convulsions must ceaselessly follow.
Abraham LincolnThere is no justification for the common claim that Christianity was responsible for the abolition of slavery. The Negro slave trade - a far more infamous practice than slavery in the ancient world - was initiated, carried on and defended by Christian men in Christian countries.
Margaret E. KnightI can not but hate the prospect of slavery's expansion. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world-enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites-causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity.
Abraham LincolnTo see an African-American elected president means that this country is really finally coming full circle from the birth defect of slavery.
Condoleezza RiceIf slavery, as a national evil, is to be abolished, and it be just that it be done at the national expense, the amount of the expense is not a paramount consideration.
James MadisonOnce your awareness becomes a flame, it burns up the whole slavery that the mind has created.
RajneeshThe war...must go on till the last man of this generation falls in his tracks...unless you acknowledge our right to self-government. We are not fighting for slavery. We are fighting for Independence,and that, or extermination, we WILL have.
Jefferson DavisWhat Abraham Lincoln had to face was a culturally and politically cohesive bloc of states comprising half the country, refusing to discuss even the limitation of slavery; while he had only the most feeble means of enforcement. The British and the French could do their emancipating at a distance; Lincoln had armed resistance almost literally at his doorstep.
Allen C. GuelzoThe African, because of the violent differences between what was native and what he was forced to in slavery, developed some of the most complex and complicated ideas about the world imaginable.
Amiri BarakaPeople speaking into handheld devices while they walk down the street and saying to the device, "I'm walking down the street now." People are enslaved. I was just up in the country for a few days last week and it was great: no television, no telephone, no nothing. I walked through the woods, sat around, smoked. And it was lovely. I think the desire to be free has mutated, and we now live in an era when the slaves celebrate their slavery - this whole corporate concept of being part of a "team" at work.
Nick ToschesFreedom is not empowerment. Empowerment is what the Serbs have in Bosnia. Anybody can grab a gun and be empowered. It's not entitlement. An entitlement is what people on welfare get, and how free are they? It's not an endlessly expanding list of rights - the "right" to education, the "right" to food and housing. That's not freedom, that's dependency. Those aren't rights, those are the rations of slavery - hay and a barn for human cattle.
P. J. O'RourkeChristianity is the enemy of liberty and civilization. It has kept mankind in slavery and oppression. The Church and the State have always fraternally united to exploit the people.
August BebelI'm offended by the is-ought fallacy, which has been used to justify slavery, women not being allowed to vote, children working in factories.
MobyMy voice is still for war. Gods! can a Roman senate long debate Which of the two to choose, slavery or death?
Joseph AddisonOne thing which Stephen A. Douglas was temperamentally incapable of doing was admitting he was wrong. He always believed that 'popular sovereignty' - the core doctrine of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill - was the right solution to the slavery controversy; and even though it had failed to solve much of anything in Kansas and Nebraska, he stubbornly insisted that this was because it had never been adequately tested.
Allen C. GuelzoI feel like so much of what happened in the Delta over the decades since slavery was abolished seems much closer in the Delta, and maybe that's because sharecropping was a fairly recent phenomena. I feel like the past is closer and it bears even more heavily on the present there than it does in the rest of the state.
Jesmyn WardLike slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings.
Nelson MandelaThe presence of the blacks is the greatest evil that threatens the United States. They increase, in the Gulf States, faster than do the whites. They cannot be kept for ever in slavery, since the tendencies of the modern world run strongly the other way. They cannot be absorbed into the white population, for the whites will not intermarry with them, not even in the North where they have been free for two generations. Once freed, they would be more dangerous than now, because they would not long submit to be debarred from political rights. A terrible struggle would ensue.
James BryceThe black family survived centuries of slavery and generations of Jim Crow, but it has disintegrated in the wake of the liberals' expansion of the welfare state.
Thomas SowellHold those things that tell your history and protect them. During slavery, who was able to read or write or keep anything? The ability to have somebody to tell your story to is so important. It says: 'I was here. I may be sold tomorrow. But you know I was here.'
Maya Angelou[T]he only thing the United States government ever did about slavery was to abolish it. Perhaps that was a mistake, but I do not feel inclined to apologize for it.
Jeff CooperOld Testament, is really one of the most wickedest books you'll ever come across. God is an insecure, rage-filled hybrid of Bobby Knight and Suge Knight. He's got these anger issues that you can't believe. He's like John McCain if McCain could fart hail. He's pro-slavery, he's pro-polygamy, he's homophobic, he'll kill you for masturbating.
Bill MaherBlacks were not enslaved because they were black but because they were available. Slavery has existed in the world for thousands of years. Whites enslaved other whites in Europe for centuries before the first black was brought to the Western hemisphere. Asians enslaved Europeans. Asians enslaved other Asians. Africans enslaved other Africans, and indeed even today in North Africa, blacks continue to enslave blacks.
Thomas SowellWe're living based on laws and ideas that we, as a society, embraced back in the days of slavery.
Ava DuVernayI wanted to touch on how we look on each other. Good hair, light skin, you must be smart; if you're black, you're dark-skinned, you're ugly. That really happens. This is something that started with slavery, when they divided the house, and it's still a part of today's society and things that we battle with.
Rapsody[Puggles] "What population signs on willingly for slavery?" "You mean other than wives?" [Glinda]
Gregory MaguireNow we have to understand that slavery would not have ended if it was left to the Africans alone, Now, Europe understood that what they were doing then was unjust, but imagine the propaganda from kings and queens of Europe to convince their people that we were cannibals, idol worshipers, horrible people, bastards, godless monkeys.
Femi KutiBeing deceived into thinking the perks of slavery are a good thing, we can easily aquire a preference for chains and a taste for the slaves rations.
Dennis GreenThe South is about the abundance, beauty, and richness of Southern culture, but also its dark underside. The history of Southern food reflects the history of slavery, of poverty, of the negotiation of power.
Marcie Cohen FerrisMy principal objections to orthodox religion are two: slavery here and hell hereafter.
Robert Green IngersollI believe that the flag of the Confederate States of America is a painful symbol and reminder of racial injustice and slavery which Abraham Lincoln denounced from here over 150 years ago.
Howard DeanThe Bible, in which these things are taught, favors drunkenness, murder, slavery, lying, stealing and lechery.
Charles Chilton MooreIt, sometimes, suits the slaveholders to claim, that their slavery is an exclusively State concern; and that the North has, therefore, nothing to do with it.
Gerrit SmithI pray that you will understand the words of Jesus, โLove one another as I have loved you.โ Ask yourself โHow has he loved me? Do I really love others in the same way?โ Unless this love is among us, we can kill ourselves with work and it will only be work, not love. Work without love is slavery.
Mother TeresaFirst then, it is apparent, horribly apparent, that the slavery question rides insolently over every other everywhere - in fact that is the only question which in the least affects the results of the elections.
Henry L. BenningThink about the amount of crap the US has done! Between slavery and the genocide of the Native Americans - if any of that had been filmed like [Adolf] Hitler, we'd never live it down.
Bill BurrAlthough all men are born free, slavery has been the general lot of the human race. Ignorant--they have been cheated; asleep--they have been surprised; divided--the yoke has been forced upon them. But what is the lesson...? The people ought to be enlightened, to be awakened, to be united, that after establishing a government they should watch over it.... It is universally admitted that a well-instructed people alone can be permanently free.
James Madison