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Slavery Quotes

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Slavery Quotes

“Following the 2017 attack in Charlottesville and the rise in white-nationalist terrorism over the past few years, Niya sees her work not just as an extension of her personal and intellectual commitments but also as a political commitment. She thinks Monticello has an important role in helping people reckon with who they are in relation to this country's history. "I think people come to us because they're grappling with their own identity," she said. "And Monticello in particular is a place that is so intimately connected to who we are, or who we believe we are, as Americans with freedom and democracy. Yet it's also a place of bondage, and now people are really, really grappling with that question. I think it makes our work here that much more important, that we are able, maybe, to navigate people through the conversation.”

AmericaFreedomHistoryDemocracyRacismSlaveryTerrorismAmerican HistoryWhite SupremacyMonticello
Book:How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America
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“I thought about how Juneteenth is a holiday that inspires so much celebration, born from circumstances imbued with so much tragedy. Enslavers in Texas, and across the South, attempted to keep Black people in bondage for months, and theoretically years, after their freedom had been granted. Juneteenth, then, is both a day to solemnly remember what this country has done to Black Americans and a day to celebrate all that Black Americans have overcome. It is a reminder that each day this country must consciously make a decision to move toward freedom for all of its citizens, and that this is something that must be done proactively; it will not happen on its own. The project of freedom, Juneteenth reminds us, is precarious, and we should regularly remind ourselves how many people who came before us never got to experience it, and how many people there are still waiting.”

FreedomHistoryDemocracySlaveryCelebrationAfrican AmericansBlacksEmancipationAfrican American HistoryJuneteenth
Book:How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America
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“While I was fighting, I heard other people speaking in the name of freedom, and the more they defended this unique right, the more enslaved they seemed to be to their parents' wishes, to a marriage in which they had promised to stay with the other person 'for the rest of their lives', to the bathroom scales, to their diet, to half- finished projects, to lovers to whom they were incapable of saying 'No' or 'It's over, to weekends when they were obliged to have lunch with people they didn't even like. Slaves to luxury, to the appearance of luxury, to the appearance of the appearance of luxury. Slaves to a life they had not chosen, but which they had decided to live because someone had managed to convince them that it was all for the best.”

FreedomSlavery
Book:The Zahir
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“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.”

FreedomSlavery
Book:Biblical Literacy
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“The silver trump of freedom had roused my soul to eternal wakefulness. Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever. It was heard in every sound, and seen in every thing. It was ever present to torment me with a sense of my wretched condition. I saw nothing without seeing it, I heard nothing without hearing it, and felt nothing without feeling it. It looked from every star, it smiled in every, calm, breathed in every wind, and moved in every storm.”

FreedomSlaveryFreedom QuotesSlavery QuotesSlavery In The United StatesFrederick Douglass
Book:Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
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“A human, caught under the oppression of a foreign nation in his/her own country, can be willingly to risk his/her life in order to achieve freedom. To call this act a self-sacrifice, one would have to presume that the person didn’t mind living as a slave of the British. The selfishness of a person who is willing to die, if necessary, fighting for his/her freedom, lies in the fact that he/she is unwilling to go on living in a world where he/she is no longer able to act on his/her own rules and regulations, that is, a world where rudimentary human conditions of existence are no longer possible.”

FreedomIndependenceSlaveryOppressionPatriotismNationalismFreedom FighterFighting For Freedom
Book:Prescription: Treating India's Soul
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“The unpolished rawness and uncompromising energy of hip-hop have their roots in slavery. Just like some of the sweetest forms of expression the human race has ever invented, like jazz and blues. They were born out of misery but were so infectiously captivating and full of such bold emotions that they permeated everything else -- contemporary music, fashion, art, the way people talk, the way people walk, the way people are.”

RaceMusicSlaveryJazzHip HopBlack HistoryBluesBlack Culture
Book:A Drop of Midnight: A Memoir
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“They all know the chant except her. She tries to follow along but her signs are halting. Still, the people on either side of her smile at her. The silence in the room is overwhelming, broken as it is by nothing but the involuntary sounds of the deaf and the rustling of the sleeves of the signing people. The girl is about to start to cry when she hears around her a muted chuckling sound. Who’s laughing, she thinks furiously, only to realize that the sound was the sniffling of other people already weeping. At the realization, she is hard-put to suppress giggles instead. She thinks: maybe all ritual has mystery and absurdity, and maybe that is what it is for. It is a curious and complex thought and like most of her legacy from the madwoman it makes her head hurt. She concentrates then on her signing.”

LoveHopeLanguageLossGriefSecretMysterySlaveryDeaf
Book:Black Wine
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“Leave before Sethe could make her realize that worse than that - far worse - was what Baby Suggs died of, what Ella knew, what Stamp saw and what made Paul D tremble. That anybody white could take your whole self for anything that came to mind. Not just work, kill, or maim you, but dirty you. Dirty you so bad you forgot who you were and couldn't think it up. And though she and others lived through and got over it, she could never let it happen to her own. The best thing she was, was her children. Whites might dirty her all right, but not her best thing, her beautiful, magical best thing - the part of her that was clean.”

ChildrenTransformationSlavery
Book:Beloved
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“Many if not most slaves would have each readily jumped, and many if not most slaves would each readily jump, at the opportunity to be a master, if such an opportunity presents or had presented itself.”

HumorFunnyQuotesOpportunityFreedomPowerInfluenceHumourMastersAuthorityHumorousQuoteSlaverySlaveProfoundPhilosopherQuote Of The DayThoughtfulControlSatireOpportunitiesThought ProvokingDeepInsightfulMasteryAphorismSouth AfricaQuotationsAfricaDominationBondageMaximsSayingsAdagesDominionProverbsAphorismsMake You ThinkHesitationDominanceAxiomsServitudeAdageMasterProverbSatiricalSayingEpigramsEnslavementAfricanQuotationGnomeSlavesSatiristMaximEpigramGnomesProvoke ThoughtMade Me ThinkAxiomDictumDictumsSouth AfricanSatiristsDominateSerfdomSlave MastersHesitateThrallReadilySlave MasterThralldomVassalage
Book:The Use and Misuse of Children
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“The stuff of nightmare is their plain bread. They butter it with pain. They set their clocks by deathwatch beetles, and thrive the centuries. They were the men with the leather-ribbon whips who sweated up the Pyramids seasoning it with other people's salt and other people's cracked hearts. They coursed Europe on the White Horses of the Plague. They whispered to Caesar that he was mortal, then sold daggers at half-price in the grand March sale. Some must have been lazing clowns, foot props for emperors, princes, and epileptic popes. Then out on the road, Gypsies in time, their populations grew as the world grew, spread, and there was more delicious variety of pain to thrive on. The train put wheels under them and here they run down the log road out of the Gothic and baroque; look at their wagons and coaches, the carving like medieval shrines, all of it stuff once drawn by horses, mules, or, maybe, men.”

BloodHorrorSlaveryGreedSweatNightmares
Book:Something Wicked This Way Comes
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“Jefferson made no consistent effort to abolish slavery ... It would be nice if Jefferson were the photo-abolitionist that the memorial and the park service brochure pretend he was ... his memorial needs to be more complex than it is ... the National Park Service could supply the contexts missing from the juxtaposed questions on its panels. Then visitors could see Jefferson as a man who not only envisioned but also betrayed the hopes of mankind.”

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Author:James Loewen
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“The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers. I could regard them in no other light than a band of successful robbers, who had left their homes, and gone to Africa, and stolen us from our homes, and in a strange land reduced us to slavery. I loathed them as being the meanest as well as the most wicked of men. As I read and contemplated the subject, behold! that very discontentment which Master Hugh had predicted would follow my learning to read had already come, to torment and sting my soul to unutterable anguish. As I writhed under it, I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing. It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy. it opened my eyes to the horrible pit, but to no ladder upon which to get out. in moments of agony, I envied my fellow-slaves for their stupidity. I have often wished myself a beast. I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own. Any thing, no matter what, to get rid of thinking! It was this everlasting thinking of my condition that tormented me. There was no getting rid of it. It was pressed upon me by every object within sight or hearing, animate or inanimate. The silver trump of freedom had roused my soul to eternal wakefulness. Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever. It was heard in every sound and seen in every thing. It was ever present to torment me with a sense of my wretched condition. I saw nothing without seeing it, I heard nothing without hearing it, and felt nothing without feeling it. It looked from every star, it smiled in every calm, breathed in every wind, and moved in every storm.”

ReadingEducationSlaveryFrederick Douglass
Book:Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
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“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property – either as a child, a wife, or a concubine – must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the faith: all know how to die but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.”

ScienceDeathPowerGraceInfluenceDevelopmentCivilizationEuropeDignitySlaveryPropertyBraveIslamCurseInsecurityRomeApathyCommerceAgricultureAfricaMilitantParalysisAncient RomeMuslimsProselytizingSharia LawRetrogradeMohammedThe ProphetCentral AfricaConcubineReligious FanaticismFanaticalMohammedanMohammedanismFaith Of IslamHydrophobiaMilitant Faith
Book:The River War
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“By pointing to the captain’s foolhardy departure from standard procedure, the officials shielded themselves from the disturbing image of slaves overpowering their captors and relieved themselves of the uncomfortable obligation to explain how and why the events had deviated from the prescribed pattern. But assigning blame to the captain for his carelessness afforded only partial comfort, for by seizing their opportunity, the Africans aboard the Cape Coast had done more than liberate themselves (temporarily at least) from the slave ship. Their action reminded any European who heard news of the event of what all preferred not to contemplate too closely; that their ‘accountable’ history was only as real as the violence and racial fiction at its foundation. Only by ceaseless replication of the system’s violence did African sellers and European buyers render captives in the distorted guise of human commodities to market. Only by imagining that whiteness could render seven men more powerful than a group of twice their number did European investors produce an account naturalizing social relations that had as their starting point an act of violence. Successful African uprisings against European captors were of course moments at which the undeniable free agency of the captives most disturbed Europeans—for it was in these moments that African captives invalidated the vision of the history being written in this corner of the Atlantic world and articulated their own version of a history that was ‘accountable.’ Other moments in which the agency and irrepressible humanity of the captives manifested themselves were more tragic than heroic: instances of illness and death, thwarted efforts to escape from the various settings of saltwater slavery, removal of slaves from the market by reason of ‘madness.’ In negotiating the narrow isthmus between illness and recovery, death and survival, mental coherence and insanity, captives provided the answers the slave traders needed: the Africans revealed the boundaries of the middle ground between life and death where human commodification was possible. Turning people into slaves entailed more than the completion of a market transaction. In addition, the economic exchange had to transform independent beings into human commodities whose most ‘socially relevant feature’ was their ‘exchangeability’ . . . The shore was the stage for a range of activities and practices designed to promote the pretense that human beings could convincingly play the part of their antithesis—bodies animated only by others’ calculated investment in their physical capacities.”

SlaveryAgencyFree SpiritDehumanization
Book:Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora
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“The African as immigrant was not an inevitable by-product of the traffic in human commodities but rather a creation of his or her own arduous making. It is this that distinguishes African displacement in the Atlantic slave trade from all other emigration. Slaves’ full personhood was the crux of the contest between Africans and those who commodified them. Traders and masters alike confronted the universal contradiction inherent in the idea of human beings as property; conceding that the slave had a will, in order to better devise means to control it, was not an acknowledgement of the slave’s personhood. The African slave, a victim of forced migration, cannot, then, be taken for granted as immigrant subject. This displaced being had to restore through her unassisted agency the pulse of social integration that saltwater slavery threatened to extinguish. That the Africans enslaved in America were immigrants was thus not an axiomatic truth, but rather one Africans had to fight for. Those who lived to walk away from the slave ship had to address the problem of their unique displacement and alienation. They did so in three ways that gave distinctive shape to their effort to build meaningful life in a new world. First, they engaged with the cognitive problem of orientation: Where are we now that we have escaped the slave ship? Second, they created kinship and community out of the disaggregated units remaining after the market’s dispersal of its human wares. Third, they came to terms with the saltwater journey’s haunting imprint on their communities, regularly reinforced by the slave ships’ return to deposit still more saltwater slaves on these unfamiliar shores.”

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Book:Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora
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“Mary! Mary! My dear, let me reason with you. I hate reasoning, John,—especially reasoning on such subjects. There's a way you political folks have of coming round and round a plain right thing; and you don't believe in it yourselves, when it comes to practice. I know you well enough, John. You don't believe it's right any more than I do; and you wouldn't do it any sooner than I.”

ReasonTruthPoliticsBeliefPracticeSlavery
Book:Uncle Tom’s Cabin
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“We’d like a list of what we lost Think of those who landed in the Atlantic The sharkiest of waters Bonnetheads and thrashers Spinners and blacktips We are made of so much water Bodies of water Bodies walking upright on the mud at the bottom The mud they must call nighttime Oh there was some survival Life After life on the Atlantic—this present grief So old we see through it So thick we can touch it And Jesus said of his wound Go on, touch it I don’t have the reach I’m not qualified I can’t swim or walk or handle a hoe I can’t kill a man Or write it down A list of what we lost The history of the wound The history of the wound That somebody bought them That somebody brought them To the shore of Virginia and then Inland Into the land of cliché I’d rather know their faces Their names My love yes you Whether you pray or not If I knew your name I’d ask you to help me Imagine even a single tooth I’d ask you to write that down But there’s not enough ink I’d like to write a list of what we lost. Think of those who landed in the Atlantic, Think of life after life on the Atlantic— Sweet Jesus. A grief so thick I could touch it. And Jesus said of his wound, Go on, touch it. But I don’t have the reach. I’m not qualified. And you? How’s your reach? Are you qualified? Don’t you know the history of the wound? Here is the history of the wound: Somebody brought them. Somebody bought them. Though I know who caught them, sold them, bought them, I’d rather focus on their faces, their names.”

PoetryPoemSlaveryAfrican AmericansBlacksSlavesSlave ShipsMiddle Passage
Book:Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019
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“the leather strap the broom the switch habits before freedom freedom: the lie which is true before: kept fed but close to death the penitentiary the gun the rope is at hand now that you free free: kept down with your eyes down now: night riders patrol in cars those born again die free a lie for grateful slaves grateful: who are better off lie: who is better off dig down into the unmarked earth lay there and be free”

PoetryPoemSlaveryPoetry QuotesSlavery In America
Book:The Gone Dead
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“Nobody can return to you something that was never yours, to begin with. Let’s trace back to the history of your race: the humans were made for slavery and were found faulty for that purpose. They showed immense energy and willpower only when confronted against tremendous obstacles with no weapons in their hands. With those bare hands, and the wits that exceeded even those of their creators and equalled the ones of mighty gods, they could break mountains. Once the humans earned at least a bit of benevolence from their creators, though, they’d immediately turn into lazy drunkards feasting upon the luxuries of life. They were quite haughty creatures, at that – one could never make them work without posing a certain purpose before their eyes. They should be given an aim they approved of, or else, they’d move no finger! Yet, if such necessities were met, they’d begin to loaf around. Forbidding them to taste those luxuries? Nay, they obeyed not! Hence, their creators cast them down on Earth – a planet inhabited by many other faulty experiments of different alien species, so that their lives would end. Yet even here, the humans defied their creators – instead of dying out, they adapted to the environment they were cast in, due to their boundless wits and the unexplainable willpower that no other species could ever possess. They mated the local species whom they could more or less find a common language with, killed off the obstacles, and conquered the planet as their own. The conquering ambitions of their creators, the boundless wisdom of their gods, and the primal instincts of Earthly nature – all of it meddled in these extraordinary creatures. They were full of instability, unpredictability, wild dreams, and rotten primitivism. Which side they would develop, depended entirely upon their choice. Aye, they had proven faulty to their creators, yet had attained the perfect treasure they required – the freedom. Could they make use of it? – Nay, certainly not… at least not many of them. There are certain individuals among the human race, who are able to well balance their mixed-up nature and grow into worthy people that merit our godly benevolence. However, most of them are quite an interesting bunch whom an ambitious man like me can make good use of. I am half-human with godly and angelic descendance, so I guess, I am worthy to be their sole ruler, their only saviour, their treasured shepherd… The shepherds too make use of their sheep – they guide them, then to consume some of them for wool and meat. Shepherds do not help the sheep for granted – they use their potential to its fullest. I shall be the same kind of a god – I shall help these magnificent creatures to achieve the wildest of their dreams but will use their powers for my own benefit. These poor creatures cannot define their potential alone, they cannot decide what’s the best and the fittest for them! I can achieve that. Free human souls? – Nay, they need no freedom. What they need, is to serve the rightful master, and that rightful master I shall be.”

HumansGodFreedomMankindSlaveryVicesHuman RaceHumankindMasterShepherd
Book:Galaxy Pirates
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“If we could only get rid of consciousness. What makes mankind tragic is not that they are the victims of nature, it is that they are conscious of it. To be part of the animal kingdom under the conditions of this earth is very well--but as soon as you know of your slavery, the pain, the anger, the strife--the tragedy begins. We can't return to nature, since we can't change our place in it. Our refuge is in stupidity [...] There is no morality, no knowledge, and no hope; there is only the consciousness of ourselves which drives us about a world that [...] is always but a vain and floating appearance.”

PainHopeNatureConsciousnessKnowledgeMankindMoralityConsciousTragedyAngerSlaveryAppearanceStupidityVainTragicRefugeStrifeVictimsAnimal Kingdom
Author:Joseph Conrad
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“All who are not lunatics are agreed about certain things. That it is better to be alive than dead, better to be adequately fed than starved, better to be free than a slave. Many people desire those things only for themselves and their friends; they are quite content that their enemies should suffer. These people can be refuted by science: mankind has become so much one family that we cannot insure our own prosperity except by insuring that of everyone else. If you wish to be happy yourself, you must resign yourself to seeing others also happy.”

LifeHappinessScienceDeathDesireFriendshipFreedomFamilyMankindSlaveryProsperityStarvationLunatics
Author:Bertrand Russell
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“It is not a person or situation that affects your life; it is the meaning you give to that person or situation, which influences your emotions and actions. Your choice is to change the meaning you gave it or to change your response, in order to create the outcome you want.”

LoveHappinessJoyWinningGrowthChangeFreedomSituationDreamsTrustPerspectiveEgoLosingEmotionsSlaveryCompetitionIntuitionPursueOutcomesSentimentsFightPassivePersonOutlookPositive OutlookSymbolismLeaveGoStaySignsNegative EmotionsComeBad SituationsPositive EmotionsAffectHard QuestionsMeaningsNo TrustSaddnessAgressiveDon T FightNegative OutlookBad PerceptionGood SituationsDon T PursueGood PerceptionLack Of IntuitionMeanings We Give PeopleMeanings We Give SituationsWhat It Means To YouWrong Perception
Author:Shannon L. Alder
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“David sees it as essential that a guide be able to find the balance between telling the truth and not pushing people so much that they shut down. He told me that when you challenge people, specifically white people's conception of Jefferson, you're in fact challenging their conception of themselves. ...David knows that some visitors to Monticello arrive with an understanding of history that is not only misguided but also harmful. He has a difficult time disentangling this from the current political moment. "That's not the story of who we are," he said, referencing the language of Make America Great Again, "but some people really, for whatever reason, they want to believe that and they want to go back there, right? They want to go back to something that never existed.”

TruthHistorySlaveryNostalgiaAmerican HistoryWhitesThomas JeffersonTour GuidesMonticelloTours
Book:How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America
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