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Harriet Tubman Quotes

Browse 13 quotes about Harriet Tubman.

Harriet Tubman Quotes

“All I want to do is reunite my family. Free them from bondage. But each time I do, another family is left in pieces. But my brothers would've been sold away if I hadn't come. Forever lost like our sisters. But I've never gone on a mission without the good Lord's consent. This is where I'm supposed to be. It hurts, yes, it does, but the Lord has shown me the way. And it led me back here to my brothers.”

“Leavin' is hard. Nothin' else in Heaven or on Earth would've made me leave Mary and my boys. I got a little girl now, too. She's another Harriet in the family. It's a special name. But nobody wears it better than you. You're a charm from above. Thank you for comin' back for us.”

“All I want to do is reunite my family. Free them from bond-age. But each time I do, another family is left in pieces. But my brothers would've been sold away if I hadn't come. Forever lost like our sisters. But I've never gone on a mission without the good Lord's consent. This is where I'm supposed to be. It hurts, yes, it does, but the Lord has shown me the way. And it led me back here to my brothers.”

“Harriet Tubman, born into slavery, her head injured by an overseer when she was fifteen, made her way to freedom alone as a young woman, then become the most famous conductor on the Underground Railroad. She made nineteen dangerous trips back and forth, often disguised, escorting more than three hundred slaves to freedom, always carrying a pistol, telling the fugitives, "You'll be free or die." She expressed her philosophy: "There was one of two things I had a right to, liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other; for no man should take me alive. . .”

“Maybe that ain't the way it is for those who kill themselves. I think it ain't about wantin' to die but the bone-deep misery of not bein' able to live peacefully. Safely. Of dreamin' and prayin' for a better life but wakin' up to the same ole pain. Livin' is hard, that's for sure. But I think choosin' to die might be harder.”

“No one nominated Harriet Tubman to her purpose, to her courage, to her mission. She did not say 'I am not a congressperson or the president, so how could I possibly participate in the fight to abolish a system as big as slavery?' She instead spent ten years making nineteen trips freeing 300 people. One person at a time.”

“We were both failures, she and I. We'd both run and been brought back, she in days, I in only hours. I probably knew more than she did about the general layout of the Eastern Shore. She knew only the area she'd been born and raised in, and she couldn't read a map. I knew about towns and rivers miles away― and it hadn't done me a damn bit of good! What had Weylin said? That educated didn't mean smart. He had a point. Nothing in my education or knowledge of the future had helped me to escape. Yet in a few years an illiterate runaway named Harriet Tubman would make nineteen trips into this country and lead three hundred fugitives to freedom.”

“She looked at me a long time, watching me sweep the floor, wearing that damn fool dress. I didn't say a word. Just kept on sweeping. Finally, she placed her small foot on the broom and stopped it. I had to look up at her then. Them eyes was staring down at me. I can't say they was kind eyes. Rather they was tight as balled fists. Full. Firm. Stirred. The wind seemed to live in that woman's face. Looking at her was like staring at a hurricane.”