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Slavery Quotes

Browse 2495 quotes about Slavery.

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Slavery Quotes

“No revolution can ever succeed as a factor of liberation unless the MEANS used to further it be identical in spirit and tendency with the PURPOSES to be achieved. Revolution is the negation of the existing, a violent protest against man's inhumanity to man with all the thousand and one slaveries it involves. It is the destroyer of dominant values upon which a complex system of injustice, oppression, and wrong has been built up by ignorance and brutality. It is the herald of NEW VALUES, ushering in a transformation of the basic relations of man to man, and of man to society.”

MenMeanHas BeensUsedSpiritPurposeValuesIgnoranceRevolutionThousandSucceedBuiltRelationTransformationSlaveryComplexesInjusticeViolentTendenciesFactorsOppressionLiberationProtestDominantIdenticalBrutalityDestroyersInhumanityNegationComplex SystemsInhumanity To Man
Author:Emma Goldman
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“What the working man sells is not directly his Labor, but his Laboring Power, the temporary disposal of which he makes over to the capitalist. This is so much the case that I do not know whether by the English Law, but certainly by some Continental Laws, the maximum time is fixed for which a man is allowed to sell his laboring power. If allowed to do so for any indefinite period whatever, slavery would be immediately restored. Such a sale, if it comprised his lifetime, for example, would make him at once the lifelong slave of his employer.”

IfsKnowsMenWould BeLawWorkCasesExamplePeriodsLaborSlaverySellsSlaveLifetimeFixedTemporaryCapitalistMaximumEmployersLifelongWorking ManContinentalEnglish Law
Book:German socialist philosophy
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“In the United States of North America, every independent movement of the workers was paralysed so long as slavery disfigured a part of the Republic. Labour cannot emancipate itself in the white skin where in the black it is branded.”

LongStatesAmericaBlackWhiteUnitedUnited StatesMovementSkinsIndependentSlaveryWorkersLabourRepublicNorth AmericaBrandedWhite Skin
Book:Capital: A Critique of Political Economy - The Process of Capitalist Production
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“It is often asserted that as woman has always been man's slave--subject--inferior--dependent, under all forms of government and religion, slavery must be her normal condition. This might have some weight had not the vast majority of men also been enslaved for centuries to kings and popes, and orders of nobility, who, in the progress of civilization, have reached complete equality.”

MenGovernmentMightFormOrderWomenProgressConditionsSubjectsCenturyKingsCivilizationNormalWeightSlaveryMajoritySlaveDependentInferiorsPopeNobilityForms Of Government
Author:Susan B. Anthony
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“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. That the fall of slavery is predetermined in the counsels of Omnipotence I cannot doubt; it is a part of the great moral improvement in the condition of man, attested by all the records of history. But the conflict will be terrible, and the progress of improvement perhaps retrograde before its final progress to consummation.”

MenFactsFallLibertyMoralPrinciplesIssuesDoubtRecordsProgressConditionsTerribleConflictApproachSlaveryFinalsImprovementOmnipotencePredeterminedRetrograde
Book:Memoirs of John Quincy Adams: Comprising Portions of His Diary from 1795 to 1848
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“The cause of the great War of the Rebellion against the United States will have to be attributed to slavery. For some years before the war began it was a trite saying among some politicians that "A state half slave and half free cannot exist." All must become slave or all free, or the state will go down. I took no part myself in any such view of the case at the time, but since the war is over, reviewing the whole question, I have come to the conclusion that the saying is quite true.”

YearsWarStatesWholeCausesUnitedViewsHalfCasesUnited StatesPoliticianSlaverySlaveConclusionRebellionGreat War
Book:The Personal Memoirs of General U. S.
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“It seemed [there are] musical nodes on the planet where cultures meet and mix, sometimes as a result of unfortunate circumstances, like slavery or something else, in places like New Orleans and Havana and Brazil. And those are places where the European culture and indigenous culture and African culture all met and lived together, and some new kind of culture and especially music came out of that.”

KindSometimesTogetherCultureResultsPlanetsCircumstancesMetsSlaveryMusicalUnfortunateNew OrleansIndigenousBrazilHavanaAfrican CultureIndigenous CultureUnfortunate Circumstances
Author:David Byrne
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“In early times, the great majority of the male sex were slaves, as well as the whole of the female. And many ages elapsed, some of them ages of high cultivation, before any thinker was bold enough to question the rightfulness, and the absolute social necessity, either of the one slavery or of the other.”

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Book:The Subjection of Women: Mill's Works
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“I'm not pessimistic, because poor people tend to bounce back. We've been through worse than this - working people been through worse than this. We've got slavery and Jim Crow. We've got workers with no rights up until `35. We're going to bounce back. We are resilient, resisting people. So, it's not pessimism, but it is blues-like. It's not optimistic. We're just prisoners of hope, that's all.”

PeoplePoorRightsSlaveryWorkersOptimisticPessimismPrisonerPoor PeopleCrowPessimisticResistingResilientBounceJim Crow
Author:Cornel West
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“I've always been interested in history, but they never taught Negro history in the public schools...I don't see how a history of the United States can be written honestly without including the Negro. I didn't [paint] just as a historical thing, but because I believe these things tie up with the Negro today. We don't have a physical slavery, but an economic slavery. If these people, who were so much worse off than the people today, could conquer their slavery, we can certainly do the same thing....I am not a politician. I'm an artist, just trying to do my part to bring this thing about.”

PeopleIfsTryingBelieveStatesTodaySchoolArtistI BelieveUnitedUnited StatesWrittenEconomicTaughtPoliticianSlaveryHistoricalPaintIncludingHonestlyConquerTiesPublic SchoolEconomic Slavery
Author:Jacob Lawrence
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“Now I see why reading was illegal for black people during slavery. I discover that I think in words. The more words I know, the more things I can think about. My vocab and thoughts grow together like the stem and petals of a flower. Reading was illegal because if you limit someone's vocab, you limit their thoughts. They can't even think of freedom because they don't have the language to.”

PeopleIfsThinkingKnowsI CanTogetherReadingLanguageGrowsBlackFlowerLimitsSlaveryIllegalBlack PeopleStemPetals
Author:M. K. Asante
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“The confused mass of rules of conduct called law, which has been bequeathed to us by slavery, serfdom, feudalism, and royalty, has taken the place of those stone monsters, before whom human victims used to be immolated, and whom slavish savages dared not even touch lest they should be slain by the thunderbolts of heaven.”

ShouldHumansHas BeensLawUsedHeavenTakenMassStonesVictimSlaveryMonstersUsed To BeConfusedSavagesRoyaltyFeudalismThunderbolts
Book:Anarchism: A Collection of Revolutionary Writings
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“I have often sung to drown my sorrow, but seldom to express my happiness. Crying for joy, and singing for joy, were alike uncommon to me while in the jaws of slavery. The singing of a man cast away upon a desolate island might be as appropriately considered as evidence of contentment and happiness, as the singing of a slave; the songs of the one and of the other are prompted by the same emotion.”

MenMightJoySongEmotionCrySorrowSingingEvidenceSlaverySlaveCastsIslandsContentmentUncommonDesolateCast Away
Book:Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, an American slave, written by himself
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“Plato defined a slave as one who accepts from another the purposes which control his conduct. This condition obtains even where there is no slavery in the legal sense. It is found wherever men are engaged in activity which is socially serviceable, but whose service they do not understand and have no personal interest in.”

MenPurposeFoundInterestAcceptingConditionsActivitySlaverySlaveDefinedEngagedPlatoPersonal Interest
Book:Democracy And Education
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“What shall be said, then, of those who insist upon ignoring the question of slavery as not involved in this deadly feud, and maintain that the only issue is, the support of the government and the preservation of the Union? Surely, they are "fools and blind"; for it is slaveholders alone who have conspired to seize the one, and overturn the other. As long as the enslavement of a single human being is sanctioned in the land, the curse of God will rest upon it.”

HumansLongSaidGovernmentHuman BeingsSupportIssuesLandFoolInvolvedSlaveryBlindUnionsGods WillCursePreservationEnslavementFeudsSlaveholders
Author:William Lloyd Garrison
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“Thus, if there exists a law which sanctions slavery or monopoly, oppression or robbery, in any form whatever, it must not even be mentioned. For how can it be mentioned without damaging the respect which it inspires? Still further, morality and political economy must be taught from the point of view of this law; from the supposition that it must be a just law merely because it is a law. Another effect of this tragic perversion of the law is that it gives an exaggerated importance to political passions and conflicts, and to politics in general.”

IfsGivingStillsFormLawPoliticalPassionPoliticsViewsEconomyEffectsInspireTaughtMoralityConflictImportanceSlaveryPoint Of ViewOppressionTragicMonopolySanctionsExaggeratedPerversionRobberyPolitical EconomySupposition
Author:Frederic Bastiat
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“The 'nations,' as they are called, with whom our pretended ambassadors, secretaries, presidents, and senators profess to make treaties, are as much myths as our own. On general principles of law and reason, there are no such 'nations.' ... Our pretended treaties, then, being made with no legitimate or bona fide nations, or representatives of nations, and being made, on our part, by persons who have no legitimate authority to act for us, have intrinsically no more validity than a pretended treaty made by the Man in the Moon with the king of the Pleiades.”

MenPersonsMadeReasonLawIndividualNationsPresidentPrinciplesHe ManKingsMoonAuthoritySlaveryMythIndividualismRepresentativesSecretarySenatorsSovereigntyTreatiesAmbassadorsValidityIndividual RightsMan In The Moon
Book:The collected works of Lysander Spooner
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“When every one is to cultivate himself into man, condemning a man to machine-like labor amounts to the same thing as slavery. If a factory-worker must tire himself to death twelve hours and more, he is cut off from becoming man. Every labor is to have the intent that the man be satisfied.... His labor is nothing taken by itself, has no object in itself, is nothing complete in itself; he labors only into another's hands, and is used (exploited) by this other.”

IfsMenHandsUsedHoursTakenCuttingObjectsHe ManAmountBecomingLaborMachinesSlaveryWorkersSatisfiedFactoriesTwelveTireCondemningFactory Workers
Author:Max Stirner
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“Teach the child to respect that which is not respectable and you teach the child the first requirement of slavery: submission to unjust authority. Children are persons. They are small persons whose perfect souls have not yet been ground through the meat grinder of slavery.”

FirstsChildrenPersonsSoulPerfectTeachAuthoritySlaveryMeatRequirementsUnjustSubmissionRespectableGrinderSmall Person
Book:Give Me Liberty: Freeing Ourselves in the Twenty-First Century
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“All socialism involves slavery.... That which fundamentally distinguishes the slave is that he labors under coercion to satisfy another's desires. The relation admits of many gradations. Oppressive taxation is a form of slavery of the individual to the community as a whole. The essential question is -- How much is he compelled to labor for other benefit than his own, and how much can he labor for his own benefit?”

WholeFormDesireIndividualCommunityResponsibilityEssentialsBenefitsLaborRelationSlaverySlaveSocialismOppressionCompelledTaxationCoercionEssential Questions
Author:Herbert Spencer
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“The present relationship existing between husband and wife, where one claims a command over the actions of the other, is nothing more than a remnant of the old leaven of slavery. It is necessarily destructive of refined love; for how can a man continue to regard as his type of the ideal a being whom he has, be denying an equality of privilege with himself, degraded to something below himself?”

MenActionMarriageWifeTypeHusbandIdealsClaimsRegardSlaveryPrivilegeCommandDestructiveHusband And WifeRefinedRemnants
Book:An Autobiography: By Herbert Spencer
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“The Senator from South Carolina has read many books of chivalry, and believes himself a chivalrous knight, with sentiments of honor and courage. Of course he has chosen a mistress to whom he has made his vows, and who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight I mean the harlot, Slavery. For her, his tongue is always profuse in words.”

WorldBelieveMeanMadeBookCoursesHonorSightSlaverySouthUglyTongueLovelyChosenSentimentsSenatorsMistressVowKnightsCarolinaChivalryChasteSouth CarolinaHarlots
Book:The Complete Works of Charles Sumner
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