Quotes About Slavery

A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men. When the majority shall at length vote for the abolition of slavery, it will be because they are indifferent to slavery, or because there is but little slavery left to be abolished by their vote. They will then be the only slaves. Only his vote can hasten the abolition of slavery who asserts his own freedom by his vote.

Slavery it is that makes slavery; freedom, freedom. The slavery of women happened when the men were slaves of kings.

[...] it is generally accepted that the Civil War was fought over the issue of slavery. That, at best, is a half-truth. Slavery was an issue, but the primary force for war was a clash between the economic interests of the North and the South. Even the issue of slavery itself was based on economics.

The U.S. has the largest prison population in the world: two million people. One out of every eight prisoners in the world is an African American. We are warehousing people as a profit to shareholders or for benefits to communities that get to host federal prisons. It is modern slavery. The whole future of America's black community is at risk. One out of every three young black men in Washington, D.C., is under one arm or the other of the criminal justice system. These are the continuing consequences of slavery.

All official and liberal science defends wage-slavery, whereas Marxism has declared relentless war on that slavery.

It is said slavery is all we are fighting for, and if we give it up we give up all. Even if this were true, which we deny, slavery is not all our enemies are fighting for. It is merely the pretense to establish sectional superiority and a more centralized form of government, and to deprive us of our rights and liberties.

Every measure of prudence, therefore, ought to be assumed for the eventual total extirpation of slavery from the United States ... I have, throughout my whole life, held the practice of slavery in ... abhorrence.

There are a few men whom slavery holds fast, but there are many more who hold fast to slavery.

It [slavery] has exercised absolute mastery over the American Church. . . . With the Bible in their hands, her priesthood have attempted to prove that slavery came down from God out of heaven. They have become slaveholders and dealers in human flesh.

I wasn't trying to work out my own ancestry. I was trying to get people to feel slavery. I was trying to get across the kind of emotional and psychological stones that slavery threw at people.

The South was at the point where the scale was tipping against slavery. It was slowly dawning on the plantation owners that slave labor was not economic, besides being morally wrong. Slavery was destined to be abolished, whether for economic reasons or moral reasons matters not, but the international intriguers were not going to wait for voluntary abolition to rob them of their trump card.

Slavery is slavery. The chain of gold is quite as bad as the chain of iron. Is there a way out?

Now, take the Constitution according to its plain reading, and I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it. On the other hand it will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery.

You can reasonably make the intellectual journey from thinking it's permissible to eat shrimp to thinking it's not permissible, or vice versa, whereas our slavery journey was uni-directional. We are as certain we are not going back to that old kind of slavery as we are that we aren't going back to the geocentric universe.

I think of the old slavery, and of the way The Economy has now improved upon it. The new slavery has improved upon the old by giving the new slaves the illusion that they are free. The Economy does not take people's freedom by force, which would be against its principles, for it is very humane. It buys their freedom, pays for it, and then persuades its money back again with shoddy goods and the promise of freedom. "Buy a car," it says, "and be free. Buy a boat and be free." Is this not the raw material of bad dreams? Or is it maybe the very nightmare itself?

But we also know that the very founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States. I think it is high time that we recognize the contribution of our forbearers who worked tirelessly, men like John Quincy Adams, who would not rest until slavery was extinguished in the country.

Let the gentleman go to Revelation to learn the decree of God - let him go to the Bible. . . . I said that slavery was sanctioned in the Bible, authorized, regulated, and recognized from Genesis to Revelation. . . . Slavery existed then in the earliest ages, and among the chosen people of God; and in Revelation we are told that it shall exist till the end of time shall come. You find it in the Old and New Testaments - in the prophecies, psalms, and the epistles of Paul; you find it recognized - sanctioned everywhere.

My own convictions as to negro slavery are strong. It has its evils and abuses...We recognize the negro as God and God's Book and God's Laws, in nature, tell us to recognize him - our inferior, fitted expressly for servitude...You cannot transform the negro into anything one-tenth as useful or as good as what slavery enables them to be.

The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery, for slavery consists in being subject to the will of another, and he that has not a vote in the election of representatives is in this case.

In 1855, a former American slave remarked: "Tisn't he who has stood and looked on, that can tell you what slavery is - tis he who has endured."I think the same holds true for women's rights. The incredulity in the question, "What rights don't women have presently that they are marching about?" reflects a troubling disconnect that comes from power and privilege.

Our mission has been the protection of the wage-worker, now; to increase his wages; to cut hours off the long workday, which was killing him; to improve the safety and the sanitary conditions of the workshop; to free him from the tyrannies, petty or otherwise, which served to make his existence a slavery.

The 14th Amendment was passed after the Civil War to apply to former slaves to ensure that they are treated like all other citizens. It never did have anything to do with gay marriage. It was never intended to have anything to do with gay marriage or animal marriage or any other kind of social contract. It was specific to slavery, and after the Civli War.

He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it’s most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the christian king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce...

What's more important is that we talk about movements; change happens through movements. The movement to end slavery, the movement to bring justice for those who have been left out of the system, movements to include women, movements around sexual preference - all these movements brought about change.

Self-hate is a form of mental slavery that results in poverty, ignorance, and crime.

Interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a glorious liberty document. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. Is slavery among them? Is it at the gateway? or is it in the temple? It is neither.

Once your awareness becomes a flame, it burns up the whole slavery that the mind has created.

Abusive language and swearing are a legacy of slavery, humiliation, and disrespect for human dignity, one’s own and that of other people.

Gilbert darling, don't let's ever be afraid of things. It's such dreadful slavery. Let's be daring and adventurous and expectant. Let's dance to meet life and all it can bring to us, even if it brings scads of trouble and typhoid and twins!" (Anne to Gilbert)

If as a member of a slave nation I could deliver the suppressed classes from their slavery without freeing myself from my own, I would do so today. But it is an impossible task.

In consigning Elian back to slavery without a hearing, this administration is setting back the cause of freedom -- in this country and in Cuba.

Our country asserts for itself the glory of being the freest upon the surface of the globe... but one dark spot still dimmed its lustre. Domestic slavery existed among a people who had themselves disdained to submit to a master.

Republicans have reached out so much to black Republicans because it's part of our tradition. Blacks have been in this nation longer than most other Americans with the possible exception of white Anglo-Saxon Protestant. The first blacks in Congress and the first black Governor were all Republicans. It was Republicans who fought the Civil War over slavery and who introduced the Civil Rights legislation over the next hundred years.

Put anger aside. It is not a solution. Patience and love is a solution. With compassion and action, together we can end slavery.

I have simplified my politics into an utter detestation of all existing governments; and, as it is the shortest and most agreeable and summary feeling imaginable, the first moment of an universal republic would convert me into an advocate for single and uncontradicted despotism. The fact is, riches are power, and poverty is slavery all over the earth, and one sort of establishment is no better, nor worse, for a people than another.

Compulsory obedience to a master is a state of slavery, willing obedience to one's father is the glory of son ship.

The most racist, nastiest act by the USA, after human slavery, was the bombing of Nagasaki. Not of Hiroshima, which might have had some military significance. But Nagasaki was purely blowing away men, women, and children.

Animal Rights is now the greatest Social Justice issue since the abolition of slavery.

When time and need require, we should resist with all our might, and prefer death to slavery and disgrace.

It is but a step from companionship to slavery when one associates with vice.

The power of unfulfilled desires is the root of all man's slavery

Feudalism, serfdom, slavery — all tyrannical institutions, are merely the most vigorous kinds of rule, springing out of, and necessary to, a bad state of man. The progress from these is in all cases the same — less government.

When is black America going to forgive white America for slavery?

No pope ever condemned slavery.

Movements are not radical. Movements are the American way. A small group of abolitionists writing and speaking eventually led to the end of slavery. A few stirred-up women brought about women's voting. The Populist movement, the Progressive movement, the anti-Vietnam War movement, the women's movement - the examples go on and on of 'little people' getting together and telling the truth about their lives. They made our government act.

If our kids were hungry, we'd step into slavery.

Excess of liberty, whether it lies in state or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery.

In a typical history book, black Americans are mentioned in the context of slavery or civil rights. There's so much more to the story.