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Slavery Quotes

Browse 2495 quotes about Slavery.

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Slavery Quotes

“No people ever yet groaned under the heavy yoke of slavery, but when they deserv'd it. ...The truth is, all might be free if they valued freedom, and defended it as they ought. ...If therefore a people will not be free; if they have not virtue enough to maintain their liberty against a presumptuous invader, they deserve no pity, and are to be treated with contempt and ignominy.”

PeopleIfsEnoughMightLibertyVirtueOughtTruth IsDeserveSlaveryHeavyTreatedPityContemptYokeInvadersPresumptuousIgnominy
Author:Samuel Adams
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“All these cries of having "abolished slavery," of having "saved the country," of having "preserved the union," of establishing a "government of consent," and of "maintaining the national honor," are all gross, shameless, transparent cheats - so transparent that they ought to deceive no one.”

CountryGovernmentCryOughtHonorSlaveryUnionsSavedDeceivingCheatConsentGrossMaintainingTransparentShameless
Book:Let's Abolish Government
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“We are a feelingless people. If we could really feel, the pain would be so great that we would stop all the suffering. If we could feel that one person every six seconds dies of starvation ... we would stop it. ... If we could really feel it in the bowels, the groin, in the throat, in the breast, we would go into the streets and stop the war, stop slavery, stop the prisons, stop the killing, stop destruction.”

PeopleIfsFeelsPersonsWarWould BePainSufferingDiesStreetsSixDestructionSlaveryPrisonKillingBreastsThroatSecondsStarvationThat One PersonBowels
Author:Julian Beck
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“By taking out a loan, I am committing myself to years of interest repayments, and therefore to years of wage slavery. And the UK has been borrowing like crazy since 1694, when the Bank of England was invented. This means that we are locked into high taxation to pay for 300 years of wars and other costly and generally disastrous state enterprises.”

YearsMeanHas BeensWarStatesInterestPayCrazyEnglandSlaveryEnterpriseLockedTaxationLoanBorrowingRepayment
Author:Tom Hodgkinson
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“I always compare young missioners to the kids who naively signed up to go to Iraq to fight terrorism. They are just the foot soldiers in the spiritual war that Mike Bickle and Lou Engle are waging against what they consider sin. They will say it is biblical truth, but the Bible says many things, and you don't see anyone saying that slavery is okay or that we should not eat shellfish. Why the fascination with sex?”

ShouldWarKidsSpiritualYoungFightingSexSinFeetOkaySlaverySoldierIraqTerrorismCompareBiblicalMikeFascinationShellfishBiblical Truth
Author:Roger Ross Williams
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“Your ancestors dragged these black people from their homes by force; and in the white man's quest for wealth and an easy life they have been ruthlessly suppressed and exploited, degraded into slavery. The modern prejudice against Negroes is the result of the desire to maintain this unworthy condition.”

PeopleMenHas BeensHomeDesireForceEasyBlackWealthWhiteResultsModernConditionsPrejudiceSlaveryBlack PeopleAncestorQuestsWhite ManUnworthyEasy Life
Book:Out of My Later Years: The Scientist, Philosopher, and Man Portrayed Through His Own Words
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“According to the classic liberal-arts ideal, learning promises liberation, but it is not liberation from demanding moral ideals and social norms, or liberation to act on our desires-it is, rather, liberation from slavery to those desires, from slavery to self.”

ArtSelfDesireSocialMoralPromiseIdealsSlaveryLiberationClassicNormSocial NormsLiberal Arts
Book:Conscience and Its Enemies: Confronting the Dogmas of Liberal Secularism
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“Slavery results from laws, laws are made by governments, and, therefore people can only be freed from slavery by the abolition of governments.... And it is time for people to understand that governments not only are not necessary, but are harmful and most highly immoral institutions, in which a self-respecting, honest man cannot and must not take part.”

PeopleMenMadeSelfGovernmentLawResultsHonestInstitutionsSlaveryImmoralHonest ManAbolition
Author:Leo Tolstoy
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“Nobody's about saving anymore. No one cares about a rainy day anymore. Nobody saves up enough for even an umbrella for a rainy day. It's sad. It really is a new form of slavery. We used to work to be able to afford material things. Now we work for these things. They're the boss. That house you can't afford, that car that's out of your price range, that cellphone that drains your bank account - that's your boss.”

EnoughCareAbleFormUsedHouseCarMaterialsAccountsSlaverySavingRangeBossDrainsRainyUmbrellaRainy DayMaterial ThingsBank AccountsNo One CaresCellphone
Author:Chris Rock
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“The true story is that black people need to tell their history. Very few films are made by black people about slavery. That itself is a crime because slavery is a very important historical event that has held our people hostage. Forget white people's role in it. In the end what's important is black people remain and live with the scars and psychological issues.”

PeopleNeedsMadeImportantEndsStoriesFilmBlackWhiteForgetRolesIssuesEventsCrimeSlaveryHistoricalPsychologicalBlack PeopleScarWhat's ImportantTrue StoryHostageHistorical Events
Author:Haile Gerima
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“When I enter a library, when I enter the world of books, I feel the ghosts of the past on my shoulders urging me to speech. I hear Patrick Henry cry to the Burgsses, 'Is Life so dear, or Peace so sweet, to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?' I hear Sojourner Truth tell me that the hand that rocks the cradle can also rock the boat, and William Lloyd Garrison say, 'I am in earnest, I will not be silenced.'”

WorldFeelsBookHandsPastRocksCrySweetSpeechSlaveryLibraryDearGhostShouldersBoatChainsEarnestCradleSojourners
Author:Sara Paretsky
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“Only by acknowledging the full extent of slavery's full grip on U.S. Society - its intimate connections to present day wealth and power, the depth of its injury to black Americans, the shocking nearness in time of its true end - can we reconcile the paradoxes of current American life.”

EndsBlackWealthConnectionsSlaveryDepthCurrentsIntimateInjuryParadoxShockingReconcilePresent DayAmerican Life
Book:Slavery by Another Name: The re-enslavement of black americans from the civil war to World War Two
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“Now in regard to trades and other means of livelihood, which ones are to be considered becoming to a gentleman and which ones are vulgar, we have been taught, in general, as follows. First, those means of livelihood are rejected as undesirable which incur people's ill-will, as those of tax-gatherers and usurers. Unbecoming to a gentleman, too, and vulgar are the means of livelihood of all hired workmen whom we pay for mere manual labour, not for artistic skill; for in their case the very wage they receive is a pledge of their slavery.”

PeopleFirstsMeanHas BeensPayCasesTaughtBecomingSkillsTaxesRegardSlaveryTradeMereIllArtisticGentlemanLabourRejectedVulgarPledgeManualsLivelihoodWorkmenUndesirableIll WillUnbecomingManual Labour
Book:Delphi Complete Works of Cicero (Illustrated)
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“The royalists of the economic order have conceded that political freedom was the business of the government, but they have maintained that economic slavery was nobody's business. They granted that the government could protect the citizen in his right to vote, but they denied that the government could do anything to protect the citizen in his right to work and his right to live. Today we stand committed to the proposition that freedom is no half-and-half affair. If the average citizen is guaranteed equal opportunity in the polling place, he must have equal opportunity in the market place.”

IfsGovernmentTodayPoliticalOrderOpportunityHalfEconomicCitizensProtectEqualVoteSlaveryAffairAverageCommittedGrantedDeniedPropositionsLive For TodayRight To VoteEqual OpportunityPolitical FreedomPollingConcededEconomic OrderEconomic Slavery
Book:The Essential Franklin Delano Roosevelt
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“Democracy turns upon and devours itself. Universal suffrage, in theory the palladium of our liberties, becomes the assurance of our slavery. And that slavery will grow more and more abject and ignoble as the differential birth rate, the deliberate encouragement of mendicancy and the failure of popular education produce a larger and larger mass of prehensile half-wits, and so make the demagogues more and more secure.”

TurnsGrowsHalfLibertyDemocracyProduceTheoryBirthMassUniversalEncouragementSlaveryRateWitSecureAssuranceDeliberateSuffrageIgnobleUniversal SuffrageBirth RatePopular Education
Author:H. L. Mencken
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“Politicians argue for abortion largely because they do not want to spend the necessary money to feed, clothe and educate more people... There are those who argue that the right to privacy is of higher order than the right to life. I do not share that view... That was the premise of slavery. You could not protest the existence or treatment of slaves on the plantation because that was private and therefore outside of your right to concerned.”

PeopleWantOrderViewsExistenceShareHigherPoliticianConcernedSlaverySlaveArguingAbortionPrivacyTreatmentProtestEducatePremisesRight To LifePlantationsRight To Privacy
Author:Jesse Jackson
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“In my schoolboy days I had no aversion to slavery. I was not aware there was anything wrong about it. No-one arraigned it in my hearing; the local papers said nothing against it; the local pulpit taught us that God approved it, that it was a holy thing, and that the doubter need only look in the Bible if he wished to settle his mind.”

IfsNeedsMindLooksSaidTaughtHolyPaperSlaveryHearingLocalsSettlingPapersApprovedTaught UsAversionPulpitDoubters
Book:Mark Twain Himself: A Pictorial Biography
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“The loss of seriousness seems to me to be, in effect, a loss of hope. I think that the thing that made people rise to real ambition, real gravity was the sense of posterity, for example - a word that I can remember hearing quite often when I was a child and I never hear anymore. People actually wanted to make the world good for people in generations that they would never see. It makes people think in very large terms to try to liberate women, for example, or to try to eliminate slavery.”

PeopleThinkingWorldTryingChildrenMadeI CanRealSeemsWantedRememberTermLossGenerationsEffectsExampleAmbitionSlaveryHearingGravityPosteritySeriousness
Author:Marilynne Robinson
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“You have to understand that the Bible is really a library of books and it has different categories of material. There are certain parts which you have to say no to. The Bible accepted slavery. St Paul said women should not speak in church at all and there are people who have used that to say women should not be ordained. There are many things that you shouldn't accept.”

PeopleShouldSaidBookDifferentUsedCertainSpeakChurchAcceptingMaterialsSlaveryLibraryAcceptedCategories
Author:Desmond Tutu
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“The true objection to slavery is not that it is unjust to the inferior but that it corrupts the superior.”

SlaverySuperiorsInferiorsUnjustObjections
Book:H. G. WELLS Ultimate Collection: 120+ Science Fiction Classics, Novels & Stories; Including Scientific, Political and Historical Works: The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds, Modern Utopia, A Short History of the World, What Is Coming, The Story of the Last Trump…
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“There was much in such a society that was primitive and insecure and it certainly could never measure up to the demands of the present epoch. But in such a society are contained the seeds of revolutionary democracy in which none will be held in slavery.”

DemocracyDemandSlaverySeedsRevolutionaryPrimitiveInsecureEpoch
Book:I have done my duty to my people and to South Africa: statement from the dock, 7 November 1962
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