Quotes About Slavery

The inconsistency of the institution of domestic slavery with the principles of the Declaration of Independence was seen and lamented . . . no insincerity or hypocrisy can be fairly laid to their charge. Never from their lips was heard one syllable of attempt to justify the institution of slavery. They universally considered it as a reproach fastened upon them by the unnatural step-mother country and they saw that before the principles of the Declaration of Independence slavery, in common with every other mode of oppression, was destined sooner or later to be banished from the earth.

Ben Skinner's brains and courage take us into the belly of the beast and expose the ugly truth of modern slavery. Instead of sensation, A Crime So Monstrous gives us desperately needed insight and analysis. This is an important book, the first deep look into America's confused relationship with human trafficking and slavery today. Skinner's balanced dissection of our government's haphazard policies will be controversial, but it can also be the foundation for a new anti-slavery agenda, one that ends the political games being played with the lives of slaves.

From my earliest recollection, I date the entertainment of a deep conviction that slavery would not always be able to hold me within its foul embrace; and in the darkest hours of my career in slavery, this living word of faith and spirit of hope departed not from me, but remained like ministering angels to cheer me through the gloom. This good spirit was from God, and to him I offer thanksgiving and praise.

Slavery had very little to do with the economic success of the West. Just look at the facts and figures and how much slavery actually contributed to development.

I mean, let's face it, we didn't have slavery in this country for over 100 years because it was a bad thing. Quite the opposite: Slavery built the South. I'm not saying we should bring it back. I'm just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark.

There is an unbroken line of police violence in the United States that takes us all the way back to the days of slavery, the aftermath of slavery, the development of the Ku Klux Klan. There is so much history of this racist violence that simply to bring one person to justice is not going to disturb the whole racist edifice.

We have different levels of slavery. We've got educational slavery. All the major religions of the world, even Christianity and Islam, are engaged in some form of servitude of people. I don't look favorably on either one although I think properly practiced all religions are basically good.

The anti-slavery parties were also called spoilers, including the Republican party that went on not just to abolish slavery but they actually take over the Presidency moving very quickly from third-party into the Presidency.

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.

In the form of security and sufficiency for the men who labor to the profit of others, and in the form of registering and controlling them in the form of an organized public supervision of their labor, slavery is already afoot. When slavery shall succeed it will succeed through the acquiescence of those who will be enslaved, for they will prefer sufficiency and security with enslavement, to freedom, responsibility, insecurity and the threat of insufficiency.

The conflict between the principle of liberty and the fact of slavery is coming gradually to an issue. Slavery has now the power, and falls into convulsions at the approach of freedom.

As my ancestors are free from slavery, I am free from the slavery of religion.

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.

Human nature is full of riddles; . . . one of those riddles is: how is it that people who have been crushed by the sheer weight of slavery and cast to the bottom of the pit can nevertheless find strength in themselves to rise up and free themselves first in spirit and then in body while those who soar unhampered over the peaks of freedom suddenly lose the taste of freedom, lose the will to defend it, and, hopelessly confused and lost, almost begin to crave slavery?'

The Civil War was started over economic issues, not slavery. The War was not popular in the North until the issue of slavery was added at a later time to turn it into a moral crusade.

Slavery was not born of racism; rather, racism was the consequence of slavery.

Some, while deploring animal abuses, on the same breath approve 'benefits to humans from certain animal abuses'! Who would criticize the Jewish holocaust or Black slavery, and YET praise the benefits to Germans or Whites??? This convenient ambiguity at the expense of animals is unacceptable!!!

What has ever threatened our liberty and prosperity save and except this institution of Slavery?

Freedom is best, I tell thee true, of all things to be won. Then never live within the Bond of Slavery.

Like Lincoln said: "If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong," and I feel the same way about the leftist dismantling of the West. If that's not wrong, then nothing is wrong.

As I said in one of my songs, we're still abolishing slavery, but nobody says it's a good thing. Nobody justifies it.

May the power of Christ, which brings freedom and service, be felt in so many hearts afflicted by war, persecution and slavery.

I Became a free woman when I decided to stop dreaming, freedom that is waiting for nothing .. and anticipation is a state of slavery

I actually believe that some residue of discrimination would lessen, because it's my view that there is a certain percentage of the white population that stereotypes and makes assumptions about African Americans because they don't inject the history of slavery and Jim Crow into current incarceration rates, or crime rates, or poverty rates, or what have you.

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.

Machines are worshipped because they are beautiful and valued because they confer power; they are hated because they are hideous and loathed because they impose slavery.

The prejudice of the race appears stronger in the States that have abolished slaves than in the States where slavery still exists. White carpenters, white bricklayers, and white painters will not work side by side with the blacks in the North but do it in almost every Southern State.

Freedom 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.

Without the institution of slavery, civilization would never have been achieved, for no one could ever have done anything intellectual if he had to spend all his time hewing and digging and fighting.

I'm offended by the is-ought fallacy, which has been used to justify slavery, women not being allowed to vote, children working in factories.

I want Cuba . . . I want Tamaulipas, Potosi, and one or two other Mexican States; and I want them all for the same reason for the planting and spreading of slavery.

I don't think the people of the slave states will ever consider the subject of slavery in its true light till some other argument is resorted to other than moral persuasion.

To depend upon a profession is a less odious form of slavery than to depend upon a father.

Slavery is not the only question which comes up in this controversy. There is a far more important one to you, and that is, what shall be done with the free negro?

More is spent in a single month [in the U.S.] fighting the war on drugs than all monies ever expended domestically or internationally fighting slavery from its inception. Per month, we spend more on the drug war than we ever have trying to free slaves.

As legal slavery passed, we entered into a permanent period of unemployment and underemployment from which we have yet to emerge.

They have exiled me now from their society and I am pleased, because humanity does not exile except the one whose noble spirit rebels against despotism and oppression. He who does not prefer exile to slavery is not free by any measure of freedom

When we see the bankruptcy, slavery, and vanity of everything else, we can finally say, ‘To die is gain.’

The battle, Sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, Sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable; and let it come! I repeat, Sir, let it come!

All restraints upon man's natural liberty, not necessary for the simple maintenance of justice, are of the nature of slavery, and differ from each other only in degree.

There is no shortage of ways that people profit indirectly from the misery and cruelty in other places. Even now, the shirts we wear and the tomatoes we eat. There are unfortunately unfair and inhumane conditions - including literal slavery - all over the world.

And I take this opportunity to declare, that... I will to my dying day oppose with all the powers and faculties God has given me, all such instruments of slavery on the one hand, and villainy on the other, as this writ of assistance is. It appears to me the worst instrument of arbitrary power, - the most destructive of English liberty and the fundamental principles of law, that ever was found in an English law book.

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.

Recognition of the modes of existence of technical objects must be the result of philosophic consideration; what philosophy has to achieve in this respect is analogous to what the abolition of slavery achieved in affirming the worth of the individual human being.

So efficient are the available instruments of slavery; fingerprints, lie detectors, brain washings, gas chambers; that we shiver at the thought of political change which might put these instruments in the hands of men of hate.

Blacks 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.

A man who feels that his religion is a slavery has not begun to comprehend the real nature of religion.

I read a funny story about how the Republicans freed the slaves. The Republicans are the ones who created slavery by law in the 1600's. Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves and he was not a Republican.