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Slavery Quotes

Browse 2495 quotes about Slavery.

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Slavery Quotes

“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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“Slavery, you know, is nothing else than the unwilling labor of many. Therefore to get rid of slavery it is necessary that people should not wish to profit by the forced labor of others and should consider it a sin and a shame. But they go and abolish the external form of slavery and arrange so that one can no longer buy and sell slaves, and they imagine and assure themselves that slavery no longer exists, and do not see or wish to see that it does, because people still want and consider it good and right to exploit the labor of others.”

PeopleKnowsWantShouldDoeStillsFormWishSinImagineLaborShameSlaverySellsSlaveProfitExploitsUnwillingAbolish
Author:Leo Tolstoy
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“To abolish a status, which in all ages God has sanctioned, and man has continued, would not only be robbery to an innumerable class of our fellow-subjects; but it would be extreme cruelty to the African Savages, a portion of whom it saves from massacre, or intolerable bondage in their own country, and introduces into a much happier state of life; especially now when their passage to the West-Indies and their treatment there is humanely regulated.”

MenCountryStatesWould BeAgeClassSubjectsFellowsSlaveryPropertyWestExtremesCrueltyTreatmentPassagesPortionsIntroducingSavagesBondageAbolishMassacresRobberyWest Indies
Book:The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: Together with A Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides
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“I have watched how steadily the general feeling, as shown at elections, has been rising against Slavery. What a proud thing for England if she is the first European nation which utterly abolishes it! I was told before leaving England that after living in slave countries all my opinions would be altered; the only alteration I am aware of is forming a much higher estimate of the negro character.”

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Book:Delphi Complete Works of Charles Darwin (Illustrated)
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“If you are going to abolish slavery, that opens up all these other questions: what system of labor is going to replace slave labor? What system of race relations is going to replace the race relations of slavery? Who is going to have power in the post-war South? The Emancipation Proclamation doesn't answer that question, but it throws [it] open.”

IfsWarAnswersRaceLaborRelationSlaverySlaveSouthPostsRace RelationsEmancipationAbolishProclamationPost WarEmancipation ProclamationSlave Labor
Author:Eric Foner
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“I believe a time will come when an opportunity will be offered to abolish this lamentable evil. Everything we do is to improve it, if it happens in our day; if not, let us transmit to our descendants, together with our slaves, a pity for their unhappy lot and an abhorrence of slavery.”

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Book:Patrick Henry in his speeches and writings and in the words of his contemporaries
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“Abolish slavery tomorrow, and not a sentence or syllable of the Constitution need be altered. It was purposely so framed as to give no claim, no sanction to the claim, of property in man. If in its origin slavery had any relation to the government, it was only as the scaffolding to the magnificent structure, to be removed as soon as the building was completed.”

IfsMenNeedsGivingGovernmentBuildingTomorrowConstitutionClaimsRelationSlaveryStructurePropertySentencesMagnificentSanctionsAlteredAbolishSyllablesFramedScaffolding
Book:Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings
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“To emancipate woman is to refuse to confine her to the relations she bears to man, not to deny them to her; let her have her independent existence and she will continue nonetheless to exist for him also: mutually recognising each other as subject, each will yet remain for the other an other...when we abolish the slavery of half of humanity, together with the whole system of hypocrisy that it implies, then the 'division' of humanity will reveal its genuine significance and the human couple will find its true form.”

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Author:Simone de Beauvoir
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“The slave frees himself when, of all the relations of private property, he abolishes only the relation of slavery and thereby becomes a proletarian; the proletarian can free himself only by abolishing private property in general.”

RelationSlaveryPropertySlavePrivate PropertyAbolish
Book:The Communist Manifesto: A Road Map to History's Most Important Political Document
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“A [desire] to abolish slavery prevails in North America, many of the Pennsylvanians have set their slaves at liberty, and [Virginia legislators] have petitioned the King for permission to make a law for preventing the importation of more [slaves] into that colony. This request, however, will probably not be granted, as their former laws of that kind have always been repealed.”

KindAmericaLawDesireLibertyKingsSlaverySlaveFormerGrantedPermissionRequestVirginiaPreventingAbolishColonyLegislatorsNorth AmericaImportation
Author:Benjamin Franklin
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“Although we have, in theory, abolished human slavery, recognized women's rights, and stopped child labor, we continue to enslave other species who, if we simply pay attention, show quite clearly that they experience parental love, pain, and the desire for freedom, just as we do.”

IfsHumansChildrenShowsPainDesirePayAttentionRightsTheoryLaborSlaverySpeciesPay AttentionWomens RightsAbolishParentalParental LoveChild LaborLove PainChild Labour
Author:Ingrid Newkirk
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