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Slavery Quotes

Browse 2495 quotes about Slavery.

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Slavery Quotes

“Dictators during the entire history of this planet have used similar techniques. By not letting the people of their country know what conditions existed outside their boundaries, they could get the people to fight to stay in those conditions. It was the old adage: Convince a slave that he's free , and he will fight to maintain his slavery .”

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Book:The Jewels of Aptor
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“I think the important thing to understand first and foremost about Michael Jackson is that he was the international emblem of the African American blues spiritual impulse that goes back through slavery - Jim Crow, Jane Crow, up to the present moment, through a Louis Armstrong, through a Ma Rainey, through a Bessie Smith, all the way to John Coltrane, Aretha Franklin and Nina Simone.”

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Author:Cornel West
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“Slavery was a central concern of governance form the time of the first nation-state. The Code of Hammurabi, the earliest know set of laws for governing an empire, prescribed death for anyone who harbored a fugitive or otherwise helped a slave to escape. The relationship between the law and bondage goes back even farther: Indeed, the oldest extant legal documents don't concern the sale of land, houses, or even animals, but slaves.”

KnowsFirstsStatesFormLawHouseNationsAnimalLandConcernSlaverySlaveCodeEmpiresDocumentsBondageGovernanceGoverningFugitive
Book:The Culture of Make Believe
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“You're a slave in your own country, White Man. Each year you get to keep less of the fruits of your labor; each year it gets more difficult to carry the burden the aliens have placed upon you; each year the cheap labor of aliens makes your future less secure; each year you retreat a few steps more into the world of slavery.”

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Author:George Lincoln Rockwell
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“There is an old joke about socialism as the synthesis of the highest achievements of the whole human history to date: from prehistoric societies it took primitivism; from the Ancient world it took slavery; from medieval society brutal domination; from capitalism exploitation; and from socialism the name.”

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Book:Revolution at the Gates: A Selection of Writings from February to October 1917
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“I endorse without reserve the much-abused sentiment of Gov. M'Duffie, that "slavery is the corner stone of our Republican edifice;" while I repudiate, as ridiculously absurd, that much-lauded but nowhere accredited dogma of Mr. Jefferson, that "all men are born equal.”

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Book:Selections from the Letters and Speeches of the Hon. James H. Hammond: Of South Carolina
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“Anarchism is opposed to states, armies, slavery, the wages system, the landlord system, prisons, monopoly capitalism, oligopoly capitalism, state capitalism, bureaucracy, meritocracy, theocracy, revolutionary governments, patriarchy, matriarchy, monarchy, oligarchy, protection rackets, intimidation by gangsters, and every other kind of coercive institution. In other words, anarchism opposes government in all its forms.”

KindStatesGovernmentFormCapitalismArmyInstitutionsSlaveryPrisonProtectionPatriarchyWagesBureaucracyMonopolyAnarchismMonarchyGangstersIntimidationOligarchyRacketLandlordTheocracyMatriarchyOligopoly
Author:Donald Rooum
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“It ought to concern every person, because it is a debasement of our common humanity. It ought to concern every community, because it tears at our social fabric. It ought to concern every business, because it distorts markets. It ought to concern every nation, because it endangers public health and fuels violence and organized crime. I’m talking about the injustice, the outrage, of human trafficking, which must be called by its true name - modern slavery.”

HumansPersonsHumanityNamesNationsSocialCommunityCommonTalkingViolenceModernCrimeTearsOughtConcernSlaveryInjusticeOrganizedFuelFabricOutragePublic HealthHuman TraffickingTraffickingOrganized CrimeCommon HumanityModern Slavery
Author:Barack Obama
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“All too often, as we know from experience, people do not choose life; they do not accept the gospel of life, but let themselves be led by ideologies and ways of thinking that block life, that do not respect life, because they are dictated by selfishness, self-interest, profit, power and pleasure and not by love. ... As a result, the Living God is replaced by fleeting human idols, which offer the intoxication of a flash of freedom, but in the end bring new forms of slavery and death.”

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Author:Pope Francis
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“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?'”

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Author:Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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“You point out that war is only a symptom of the whole horrid business of human behavior, and cannot be isolated. And that, even if we abolish war, we shall not abolish hate and greed. So might it have been argued about slave emancipation, that slavery was but one aspect of human disgustingness, and that to abolish it would not end the barbarity that causes it. But did the abolitionists therefore waste their breath? And do we waste ours now in protesting against war?”

IfsHumansHas BeensWarEndsWholeMightHateCausesWasteBehaviorAspectBreathsSlaverySlaveGreedIsolatedHuman BehaviorSymptomsEmancipationAbolishAbolitionistBarbarityAgainst War
Author:Rose Macaulay
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“Every man that tried to destroy the Government, every man that shot at the holy flag in heaven, every man that starved our soldiers... every man that wanted to burn the negro, every one that wanted to scatter yellow fever in the North, every man that opposed human liberty, that regarded the auction-block as an altar and the howling of the bloodhound as the music of the Union, every man who wept over the corpse of slavery, that thought lashes on the naked back were a legal tender for labour performed, every one willing to rob a mother of her child - every solitary one was a Democrat.”

MenHumansChildrenWarGovernmentWantedMotherHeavenLibertyHistoryWillingHolyShotsSlaveryUnionsDemocratSoldierEvery ManNakedBlockCivil WarLabourYellowFlagsSolitaryCorpsesAltarsFeverAmerican Civil WarLashesAuctionsYellow FeverBloodhounds
Author:Robert Green Ingersoll
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“Centuries from now our great-great-great-grandchildren will look back at us with amazement at how we could allow such a precious achievement of human culture as the telling of a story to be shattered into smithereens by commercials, the same amazement we feel today when we look at our ancestors for whom slavery, capital punishment, burning of witches, and the inquisition were acceptable everyday events.”

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Author:Werner Herzog
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“Communism worked honestly by officials devoid of human frailties and devoted to nothing but the good of its slaves, would have certain manifest material advantages as compared with a proletarian wage-system where millions live in semi-starvation, and many millions more in permanent dread thereof. But even if it were administered thus Communism would only produce its benefits through imposing slavery.”

IfsHumansWisdomCertainPoliticsMillionsEconomyProduceMaterialsBenefitsAdvantageSlaverySlaveHonestlyCommunismPermanentOfficialsLiberalismManifestDreadDevotedStarvationImposingFrailtyHuman Frailties
Author:Hilaire Belloc
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“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.”

MenWisdomFormPoliticsResponsibilityEconomySecurityHe ManSucceedLaborSlaveryThreatProfitOrganizedLiberalismInsecurityEnslavementSufficiencySupervisionAcquiescenceInsufficiency
Book:Essays of a Catholic
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“When the mass of families in a State are without property, then those who were once citizens become virtually slaves. The more the State steps in to enforce conditions of security and sufficiency; the more it regulates wages, provides compulsory insurance, doctoring, education, and in general takes over the lives of the wage-earners, for the benefit of the companies and men employing the wage-earners, the more is this condition of semi-slavery accentuated.”

MenStatesWisdomPoliticsCompanyStepsEconomyConditionsSecurityCitizensBenefitsMassSlaveryPropertySlaveLiberalismWagesSufficiencyCompulsoryEmployingDoctoring
Author:Hilaire Belloc
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“A nation that will keep people in slavery for 244 years will "thingify" them and make them things. And therefore, they will exploit them and poor people generally economically. And a nation that will exploit economically will have to have foreign investments and everything else, and it will have to use its military might to protect them. All of these problems are tied together. What I'm saying today is that we must go from this convention and say, "America, you must be born again!"”

PeopleYearsUseProblemWisdomMightTodayTogetherAmericaPoliticsNationsBornPoorEconomyMilitaryProtectSlaveryInvestmentLiberalismConventionsTiedPoor PeopleExploitsBorn Again
Author:Martin Luther King, Jr.
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“Modern technique has made it possible for leisure, within limits, to be not the prerogative of small privileged classes, but a right evenly distributed throughout the community. The morality of work is the morality of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery.”

WorldNeedsMadeWisdomPoliticsCommunityClassEconomyModernMoralityLimitsSlaverySlaveTechniqueMade ItLiberalismLeisurePrivilegedModern WorldPrerogative
Book:In Praise of Idleness
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“If a man surrenders all power of self-determination in regard to the profits, management or ownership of the place where he works, he not only loses that special prerogative which marks him off from a cow in a pasture, but what is worse, he loses all capacity for determining any work. This is the beginning of a slavery which sometimes goes by the name of security.”

IfsMenSelfSometimesWisdomPoliticsNamesLosesEconomySpecialSecurityCapacityDeterminationMarkRegardManagementSlaveryProfitSurrenderLiberalismCowsSelf DeterminationOwnershipPrerogativePasturesTime Goes By
Author:Fulton J. Sheen
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“There are three ways in which a man becomes a slave. He may be born into slavery, or forced into it, or he can deliberately accept his servitude. All three forms flourish in the modern world. Men are born and forced into slavery in Russia and her satellites states. Men in the free world invite slavery when they ask the government to provide complete security, when they surrender their freedom to the "Welfare State."”

MenWorldWayMayStatesWisdomGovernmentFormThreeAsksPoliticsBornAcceptingEconomyModernSecuritySlaverySlaveSurrenderRussiaWelfareLiberalismInvitesModern WorldServitudeSatellitesWelfare StateFree WorldThree Ways
Author:Fulton J. Sheen
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“Organized religion, being founded on superstition, is, perforce, not scientific. And all that which is not scientific - that is, truthful - must be bolstered up by force, fear and falsehood. Thus we always find slavery and organized religion going hand in hand.”

HandsForceAtheismSlaveryPositive AtheismOrganizedTruthfulSuperstitionsFalsehoodHand In HandOrganized Religion
Book:Selected Writings of Elbert Hubbard ...
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“Man preys on man; and you mourn for the idle tapestry that decorated a gothic pillar, and the dronish bell that summoned the fat priest to prayer. You mourn for the empty pageant of a name, when slavery flaps her wing, ... Why is our fancy to be appalled by terrific perspectives of a hell beyond the grave? - Hell stalks abroad; - the lash resounds on the slave's naked sides; and the sick wretch, who can no longer earn the sour bread of unremitting labour, steals to a ditch to bid the world a long good night.”

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Author:Mary Wollstonecraft
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“I wanted to touch on how we look on each other. Good hair, light skin, you must be smart; if you're black, you're dark-skinned, you're ugly. That really happens. This is something that started with slavery, when they divided the house, and it's still a part of today's society and things that we battle with.”

IfsLooksStillsLightHappensTodayWantedHouseBlackDarkHairBattleSmartSkinsSlaveryUglyDividedBeing SmartDark SkinnedGood HairToday's Society
Author:Rapsody
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