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Slavery Quotes

Browse 2495 quotes about Slavery.

Slavery Quotes

“A fundamental condition of Being is slavery. Man is the slave of God, and God that of His vanity.”

Men Conditions Fundamentals Slavery Slave Vanity

Author:Kedar Joshi

“Slavery is a condition imposed upon individuals or races not sufficiently able to protect or defend themselves, and so long as a race or people expose themselves to the danger of being weak, no one can tell when they will be reduced to slavery.”

People Long Able Individual Race Conditions Danger Protect Weak Slavery

Book:Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey

Source: Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey

“Up until now, women have depended completely upon men for their survival. You're dealing with thousands of years of history, where sexual slavery was the condition. While suddenly the laws may change, to some extent, the conditioning doesn't go away that fast.”

Men Years May Law Women Conditions Survival Enlightenment Slavery Going Away Conditioning

Author:Frederick Lenz

“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.”

Men Government Might Form Order Women Progress Conditions Subjects Century Kings Civilization Normal Weight Slavery Majority Slave Dependent Inferiors Pope Nobility Forms Of Government

Author:Susan B. Anthony

“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.”

Source: Memoirs of John Quincy Adams: Comprising Portions of His Diary from 1795 to 1848

“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.”

Men Purpose Found Interest Accepting Conditions Activity Slavery Slave Defined Engaged Plato Personal Interest

Book:Democracy And Education

Source: Democracy And Education

“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 .”

People Knows Country Used Fighting Conditions Planets Slavery Slave Technique Boundaries Convince Dictator Adages

Book:The Jewels of Aptor

Source: The Jewels of Aptor

“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.”

Men States Wisdom Politics Company Steps Economy Conditions Security Citizens Benefits Mass Slavery Property Slave Liberalism Wages Sufficiency Compulsory Employing Doctoring

Author:Hilaire Belloc

“Enslave a man and you destroy his ambition, his enterprise, his capacity. In the constitution of human nature, the desire of bettering one's condition is the mainspring of effort. The first touch of slavery snaps this spring.”

Men Firsts Humans Desire Effort Conditions Human Nature Ambition Spring Capacity Constitution Slavery Enterprise Snaps

Book:Slavery

Source: Slavery

“I utterly reject the view that the Third World is doomed to poverty and starvation. Not only is this wrong, I think this attitude verges on the immoral, like thinking that slavery is an unalterable facet of the human condition so why bother doing anything about it?”

Thinking World Humans Views Attitude Poverty Conditions Thirds Slavery Bother Rejects Human Condition Doomed Immoral Starvation Third World Verge Facets Why Bother

Author:Alex Tabarrok

“Tears and complaints - the means which I have called water power - can be an extremely useful weapon for disturbing cooperation and reducing other to a condition of slavery.”

Mean Water Conditions Tears Weapons Slavery Cooperation Complaints Disturbing Reducing Water Power

Author:Alfred Adler

“Give the slave the least elevation of religious sentiment, and he is not slave: you are the slave: he not only in his humility feels his superiority, feels that much deplored condition of his to be a fading trifle, but he makes you feel it too. He is the master.”

Giving Feels Religious Conditions Humility Masters Slavery Slave Sentiments Superiority Trifles Fading Elevation

Book:The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations

Source: The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations

“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.”

Source: Out of My Later Years: The Scientist, Philosopher, and Man Portrayed Through His Own Words

“To repress rebellion is to maintain the status quo, a condition which binds the mortal creature in a state of intellectual or physical slavery. But it is impossible to chain man merely by slaving his body; the mind also must be held, and to accomplish this, fear is the accepted weapon. The common man must fear life, fear death, fear God, fear the Devil, and fear most the overlords, the keepers of his destiny.”

“Whatever Lincoln's racial views, which are not totally modern and egalitarian in many ways, he believes blacks should have this natural right to improve their condition in life and slavery denies that to them.”

Way Should Believe Natural Views Modern Conditions Should Have Slavery Deny

Author:Eric Foner

“I have observed this in my experience of slavery, - that whenever my condition was improved, instead of its increasing my contentment, it only increased my desire to be free, and set me to thinking of plans to gain my freedom. I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason. He must be able to detect no inconsistencies in slavery; he must be made to feel that slavery is right; and he can be brought to that only when he ceased to be a man.”

Thinking Men Feels Made Reason Able Desire Found Moral Vision Plans Conditions Gains Slavery Slave Contentment Be A Man Inconsistency

Book:Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Source: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

“There is no such thing as Freedom (though it is the most important condition of human life, after Humility, -which does not exist either). There is only Slavery (walls around one) and absence-of-Slavery (ability to walk in any direction, or to remain still).”

Humans Doe Stills Important Ability Walks Conditions Humility Wall Slavery Absence Human Life

Author:John Berryman

“I have observed this in my experience of slavery, that whenever my condition was improved, instead of increasing my contentment; it only increased my desire to be free, and set me thinking of plans to gain my freedom.”

Thinking Inspirational Desire Plans Conditions Gains Slavery Contentment Black History Black History Month Black History Month Inspirational Black History Inspirational

Book:Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Source: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

“Slavery is so intolerable a condition that the slave can hardly escape deluding himself into thinking that he is choosing to obey his master's commands when, in fact, he is obliged to. Most slaves of habit suffer from this delusion and so do some writers, enslaved by an all too personal style.”

Thinking Facts Suffering Conditions Style Masters Habit Slavery Slave Command Delusion Obliged Be A Slave Personal Style Masters And Slaves

Author:W. H. Auden

“Whereas, Slavery, throughout its entire existence in the United States is none other than a most barbarous, unprovoked, and unjustifiable War of one portion of its citizens upon another portion; the only conditions of which are perpetual imprisonment, and hopeless servitude or absolute extermination; in utter disregard and violation of those eternal and self-evident truths set forth in our Declaration of Independence.”

Source: The Public Life of Capt. John Brown, with an Auto-biography of His Childhood and Youth

“Its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery . . . is his natural and normal condition.”

“It would be well for those interested to reflect whether there now exists, or ever has existed, a wealthy and civilized community in which one portion did not live on the labor of another; and whether the form in which slavery exists in the South is not but one modification of this universal condition... Let those who are interested remember that labor is the only source of wealth, and how small a portion of it, in all old and civilized countries, even the best governed, is left to those by whose labor wealth is created.”

Wells Country Would Be Remember Form Left Community Wealth Conditions Source Labor Universal Slavery South Wealthy Civilized Portions Modification

Author:John C. Calhoun

“Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”

“Our mission has been the protection of the wage-worker, now; to increase his wages; to cut hours off the long workday, which was killing him; to improve the safety and the sanitary conditions of the workshop; to free him from the tyrannies, petty or otherwise, which served to make his existence a slavery.”

Long Has Beens Hours Existence Cutting Conditions Increase Safety Slavery Workers Killing Missions Protection Tyranny Wages Petty Workshops Sanitary

Book:The American Federationist

Source: The American Federationist

“In most ages many countries have had part of their inhabitants in a state of slavery; yet it may be doubted whether slavery can ever be supposed the natural condition of man. It is impossible not to conceive that men in their original state were equal; and very difficult to imagine how one would be subjected to another but by violent compulsion. An individual may, indeed, forfeit his liberty by a crime; but he cannot by that crime forfeit the liberty of his children.”

Source: The life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D., comprehending an account of his studies, and numerous works, in chronological order: a series of his epistolary correspondence and conversations with many eminent persons; and various original pieces of his composition, never before published; the whole exhibiting a view of literature and literary men in Great Britain, for near half a century during which he flourished

“The genius of any slave system is found in the dynamics which isolate slaves from each other, obscure the reality of a common condition, and make united rebellion against the oppressor inconceivable.”

Reality Found United Common Conditions Genius Social Justice Slavery Slave Rebellion Obscure Oppressors Dynamics Uprising

Author:Andrea Dworkin

“The creation of the spiritual was no accident. It was a creation born of necessity, so that the slave might more adequately adjust himself to the conditions of the New World.”

World Might Spiritual Born Conditions Creation Slavery Slave Accidents New World

Author:Benjamin E. Mays