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Quote by Fredrick Douglass

“Slavery does away with fathers, as it does away with families. Slavery has no use for either fathers or families, and its laws do not recognize their existence in the social arrangements of the plantation. When they do exist, they are not the outgrowths of slavery, but are antagonistic to that system. The order of civilization is reversed here”

Quote by Fredrick Douglass

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My Bondage and My Freedom

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Fredrick Douglass

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“Only love can bring full freedom, all else brings half freedom. What is half freedom you ask? When in the name of freedom you imprison yourself to one side or sect, everything outside that sect seems evil. For example, fundamentalists choose the side of blind faith, and every act of reason seems like blasphemy - just like cold, sharp-tongue intellectuals choose the side of rationality even at the expense of humanity, and everything illogical seems outdated - or wait, I got a better one - so-called social activists often get so attached to their self-imposed identity of victimhood, that every person with a political, corporate, legal or bureaucratic background seems to appear as devil incarnate. This, my friend, is what I call "half freedom", which by the way, is far worse than the lack of freedom. And even though it manifests as an act of willful choice, when you get down to it, it's just plain old rigidity. And if we want to build a truly just, inclusive and progressive society, this hypocritical half-freedom won't do - what's needed is whole freedom - a kind of freedom that liberates the mind of all superstition as well as ignorant suspiciousness. It's time we realize, yelling about justice without using common sense is just as useless as keeping quiet. What this means is that, we gotta come together regardless of our background - the teacher, the scientist, the student, the copper, the politician, the civil servant, the entrepreneur, the economist, the janitor, the construction worker - every single person from every single walk of life must come forward surpassing all suspicious conspiracy, and contribute the best of their capacity in the making of a real civilized world.”

“In consonance with the biblical depiction of these early Israelites, the Jewish tradition regards the generation of the desert as a pathetic group. Reared as slaves, they retain throughout their lives a 'slave mentality.' When Egyptian troops, whom they greatly outnumber, pursue them, it never occurs to them to say, 'Let's fight back!' Instead, they decry Moses' bringing them into the desert to die. When there are shortages of provisions, they don't think, 'Is there anything we can do for ourselves?'Instead, like children, they turn on Moses and God and demand that they set everything right.”