Home / Topics / Slavery Quotes

Slavery Quotes

Browse 2495 quotes about Slavery.

Slavery Quotes

“There should be no element of slavery in learning. Enforced exercise does no harm to the body, but enforced learning will not stay in the mind. So avoid compulsion, and let your children's lessons take the form of play.”

Should Mind Children Doe Play Body Form Teaching Exercise Lessons Elements Slavery Harm Your Children Compulsion Epistemology Pedagogy

Author:Plato

“I think of the old slavery, and of the way The Economy has now improved upon it. The new slavery has improved upon the old by giving the new slaves the illusion that they are free. The Economy does not take people's freedom by force, which would be against its principles, for it is very humane. It buys their freedom, pays for it, and then persuades its money back again with shoddy goods and the promise of freedom. "Buy a car," it says, "and be free. Buy a boat and be free." Is this not the raw material of bad dreams? Or is it maybe the very nightmare itself?”

Source: Jayber Crow: A Novel

“A man's moral sense must be unusually strong if slavery does not make him a thief.”

Ifs Men Doe Strong Moral Slavery Thieves

Book:Jefferson: Political Writings

Source: Jefferson: Political Writings

“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.”

People Knows Want Should Doe Stills Form Wish Sin Imagine Labor Shame Slavery Sells Slave Profit Exploits Unwilling Abolish

Author:Leo Tolstoy

“The ant, who has toiled and dragged a crumb to his nest, will furiously defend the fruit of his labor, against whatever robber assails him. So plain, that the most dumb and stupid slave that ever toiled for a master, does constantly know that he is wronged.”

Knows Doe Dream Stupid Masters Labor Slavery Slave Fruit Dumb American Dream Ants Nests Robbers Crumbs Wronged Upward Mobility

Author:Abraham Lincoln

“The first thing Islam does is to destroy the self image of the believers. It convinces them that without Islam they are worthless creatures only fit for hellfire. It tells them that their culture is jahelyyah (ignorance) and their ancestral religion was taaghoti (satanic). They are made to despise their identity and selfhood and seek their glory in their submission to Islam and slavery to its deity who was Muhammad's own alter ego.”

Firsts Doe Made Self Culture Identity Ignorance Fit Creatures Ego Glory Slavery Islam Believer Convince Despise Worthless Submission Deities Muhammad Satanic Alter Ego

Author:Ali Sina

“A slave- holder, who has decided to abolish slavery, does not consult his slaves whether they desire freedom or not.”

Doe Desire Freedom Decided Slavery Slave Abolish

Book:The Wit and Wisdom of Gandhi

Source: The Wit and Wisdom of Gandhi

“Know what is evil, no matter how worshipped it may be. Let the man of sense not mistake it, even when clothed in brocade, or at times crowned in gold, because it cannot thereby hide its hypocrisy, for slavery does not lose its infamy, however noble the master.”

Knows Men May Doe Matter Evil Loses Mistake He Man Masters Gold Slavery Noble Hypocrisy Infamy

Author:Baltasar Gracian

“Most of what Congress does fits the description of forcing one American to serve the purposes of another American. That description differs only in degree, but not in kind, from slavery.”

Kind Doe Purpose Fit Degrees Slavery Congress Description

Author:Walter E. Williams

“Whether happiness or unhappiness, freedom or slavery, in short whether good or evil results from an improved environment depends largely upon how the change has been brought about, upon the methods by which the physical results have been reached, and in what spirit and for what purpose the fruits of that change are used. Because a higher standard of living, a greater productiveness and a command over nature are not good in and of themselves does not mean that we cannot make good of them, that they cannot be a source of inner strength.”

“If we want to understand the actions of a man in the early 1860's, put yourself back there in his shoes. As a young man he began piloting steamboats on the Mississippi, a job he loved and wanted to do the rest of his life, he said. The Civil War ended traffic on the River and his job. He wrote about it in A History of A Campaign That Failed. He said: "I joined the Confederacy, served for two weeks, deserted, and the Confederacy fell." His attachment to the Southern ideal of slavery does not appear very sturdy.”

Ifs Men Want Doe Said Two War Action Wanted Jobs Young Week Ideals Rivers Slavery Shoes Campaigns Young Man Civil War Attachment Southern Traffic Two Weeks Mississippi Deserted Sturdy Steamboats

Author:Hal Holbrook

“Let's say Twitter existed during the Civil War. We would have a better understanding of people in the Confederacy who were against slavery, people in the North who actually felt we should just let the South be the South. Because the way it is now, it seems like we have this portrait where everybody in Georgia hated Yankees and everybody in the North was enlightened. That wouldn't seem as clear cut as it does now.”

People Way Should Doe War Seems Felt Understanding Clear Cutting Slavery South Hated Civil War Enlightened Portraits Yankees Georgia During The Civil War

Author:Chuck Klosterman

“Other human rights atrocities from African slavery to the killing fields of Cambodia, the Armenian and Rwandan Genocides are all of course to be remembered, but diluting their particularity or comparing degrees of evil does no good.”

Humans Doe Courses Evil Rights Fields Degrees Slavery Killing Human Rights Compare Remembered Genocide Atrocities Armenians Cambodia

Author:Jeremy Corbyn

“Most men today cannot conceive of a freedom that does not involve somebody's slavery.”

Men Doe Today Slavery

Book:Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil

Source: Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil

“Free yourself from one passion to be dominated by another and nobler one. But is not that, too, a form of slavery? To sacrifice oneself to an idea, to a race, to God? Or does it mean that the higher the model the longer the longer the tether of our slavery?”

Mean Doe Ideas Form Passion Race Sacrifice Higher Models Slavery Oneself Free Yourself

Book:Zorba the Greek

Source: Zorba the Greek

“There was a time when you were not a slave, remember that. You walked alone, full of laughter, you bathed bare-bellied. You say you have lost all recollection of it, remember . . . You say there are no words to describe this time, you say it does not exist. But remember. Make an effort to remember. Or, failing that, invent.”

Doe Remember Time Lost Effort Failing Laughter Slavery Slave Feminist Good Times Recollection Inventing Remember You Remembers You Bathing Wording

Author:Monique Wittig

“The Bible may, indeed does, contain a warrant for trafficking in humans, for ethnic cleansing, for slavery, for bride-price, and for indiscriminate massacre, but we are not bound by any of it because it was put together by crude, uncultured human mammals.”

Source: God is Not Great

“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

“How does something immoral, when done privately, become moral when it is done collectively? Furthermore, does legality establish morality? Slavery was legal; apartheid is legal; Stalinist, Nazi, and Maoist purges were legal. Clearly, the fact of legality does not justify these crimes. Legality, alone, cannot be the talisman of moral people.”

People Doe Done Facts Moral Crime Morality Slavery Justify Nazi Immoral Apartheid Legality Talismans

Author:Walter E. Williams

“Holocausts do not amaze me. Rapes and child slavery do not amaze me. And Franklin, I know you feel otherwise, but Kevin does not amaze me. I am amazed when I drop a glove in the street and a teenager runs two blocks to return it. I am amazed when a checkout girl flashes me a wide smile with my change, though my own face had been a mask of expedience. Lost wallets posted to their owners, strangers who furnish meticulous directions, neighbors who water each other's houseplants - these things amaze me.”

Source: We Need To Talk About Kevin

“There was no place in the land where the seeker could not find some small budding sign of pity for the slave. No place in all the land but one - the pulpit. It yielded last; it always does. It fought a strong and stubborn fight, and then did what it always does, joined the procession - at the tail end. Slavery fell. The slavery texts in the Bible remained; the practice changed; that was all.”

Doe Ends Lasts Religion Fighting Strong Practice Land Changed Slavery Slave Pity Tails Stubborn Seekers Pulpit Procession

Book:What Is Man? and Other Philosophical Writings

Source: What Is Man? and Other Philosophical Writings

“Love that does not renew itself every day becomes a habit and in turn a slavery.”

Doe Turns Habit Slavery Valentine's Day Being Alone Family Love Happy Day

Book:The New Frontier and Sand and Foam

Source: The New Frontier and Sand and Foam

“Slavery may, perhaps, be best compared to the infantile disease of measles; a complaint which so commonly attacks the young of humanity in their infancy, and when gone through at that period leaves behind it so few fatal marks; but which when it normally attacks the fully developed adult becomes one of the most virulent and toxic of diseases, often permanently poisoning the constitution where it does not end in death.”

May Doe Ends Young Humanity Behinds Gone Periods Disease Adults Constitution Mark Slavery Toxic Complaints Infancy Poisoning Infantile Measles

Author:Olive Schreiner

“They have exiled me now from their society and I am pleased, because humanity does not exile except the one whose noble spirit rebels against despotism and oppression. He who does not prefer exile to slavery is not free by any measure of freedom”

Doe Truth Spirit Humanity Freedom Liberty Slavery Noble Oppression Rebel Exile Despotism

Author:Khalil Gibran

“So plain that no one, high or low, ever does mistake it, except in a plainly selfish way; for although volume upon volume is written to prove slavery a very good thing, we never hear of the man who wishes to take the good of it, by being a slave himself.”

Men Way Doe Wish Mistake Written He Man Prove Lows Slavery Good Things Slave Very Good Selfish Volume Be A Slave American Slavery Slavery In America

Author:Abraham Lincoln

“The most fundamental message of Gautama the Buddha is not God, is not soul... it is freedom: freedom absolute, total, unconditional. He does not want to give you an ideology, because every ideology creates its own slavery.”

Want Giving Doe Soul Freedom Messages Absolutes Fundamentals Slavery Ideology Unconditional

Author:Rajneesh

“That state is a state of slavery in which a man does what he likes to do in his spare time and in his working time that which is required of him.”

Men Doe States Capitalism Slavery Likes Spares Spare Time

Author:Eric Gill

“I apply the Abraham Lincoln test for moral casuistry: 'If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.' Well, then, if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture.”

Ifs Wells Doe Moral Tests Slavery Torture Abraham

Book:Arguably

Source: Arguably

“If slavery be a sin, it is not yours. It does not rest on your action for its origin, on your consent for its existence. It is a common law right to property in the service of man; its origin was Divine decree.”

Ifs Men Doe Action Law Sin Common Existence Divine Slavery Property Consent Decree Common Law

Author:Jefferson Davis

“Does man's freedom consist in revolting against all laws? We say no, in so far as laws are natural, economic, and social laws, not authoritatively imposed but inherent in things, in relations, in situations, the natural development of which is expressed by those laws. We say YES if they are political and juridical laws, imposed upon men by men.”

“What does Christianity mean today? National Socialism is a religion. All we lack is a religious genius capable of uprooting outmoded religious practices and putting new ones in their place. We lack traditions and ritual. One day soon National Socialism will be the religion of all Germans. My Party is my church, and I believe I serve the Lord best if I do his will, and liberate my oppressed people from the fetters of slavery. That is my gospel.”

“Nor is the guilt entirely with the warmongers, plutocrats and demagogues. If people permit exploitation and regimentation in any name, they deserve their slavery. A tyrant does not make his tyranny possible. It is made by the people and not otherwise.”

People Ifs Doe Made Names Deserve Slavery Guilt Tyranny Permit Tyrants Exploitation Warmongers Regimentation

Author:Jack Parsons

“To be ignorant and to be deceived are two different things. To be ignorant is to be a slave of the world. To be deceived is to be the slave of another man. The question will always be: Why, when all men are ignorant, and therefore already slaves, does this latter slavery sting us so?”

Men World Doe Two Different Slavery Slave Ignorant Latter Different Things Deceived Another Man Be A Slave Two Different Things

Book:The Darkness that Comes Before: The Prince of Nothing, Book One (The Prince of Nothing)

Source: The Darkness that Comes Before: The Prince of Nothing, Book One (The Prince of Nothing)

“No, this is not what a fair God would do. And why does it not say anywhere in the Bible that slavery is wrong? It only says that you should treat your slaves well. Well, I don't care if you treat them well. How is it possible that it is not immoral to own another person? Why isn't that one of the Ten Commandments? 'Thou shalt not own another person.' You want to sit here and tell me that fornication is worse than owning someone?”

Ifs Want Should Wells Persons Doe Care Ten Fairs Treats Slavery Slave Don't Care I Don't Care Commandments Immoral Ten Commandments

Author:Mira Sorvino

“Where there is a man who does not labor because another is compelled to work for him, there slavery is.”

Men Doe Political Program Labor Slavery Compelled Government Programs

Book:Church and State and Other Essays: Including Money; Man and Woman: Their Respective Functions; The Mother; A Second Supplement to the Kreutzer Sonata

Source: Church and State and Other Essays: Including Money; Man and Woman: Their Respective Functions; The Mother; A Second Supplement to the Kreutzer Sonata

“He who does not prefer exile to slavery is not free by any measure of freedom, truth and duty.”

Doe Truth Duty Slavery Exile

Author:Khalil Gibran

“It does not matter what the whip is; it is none the less a whip, because you have cut thongs for it out of your own souls.”

Doe Soul Matter Cutting Slavery Submission Whips Thongs

Book:The Crown of Wild Olive: Three Lectures on Work, Traffic, and War

Source: The Crown of Wild Olive: Three Lectures on Work, Traffic, and War

“My people have a country of their own to go to if they choose... Africa... but, this America belongs to them just as much as it does to any of the white race... in some ways even more so, because they gave the sweat of their brow and their blood in slavery so that many parts of America could become prosperous and recognized in the world.”

People Ifs World Way Doe Country America White Race Blood Slavery Sweat Prosperous Brows White Race Prosperous Country

Author:Josephine Baker

“The Soul of man is made an article of merchandize by his fellow man and can such a land be happy? No! Happyness does not dwell in any land that is scard by the blighting curse of Slavery.”

Men Doe Made Soul Land Fellows Slavery Curse Articles Fellow Man

Author:Ezra Cornell