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Slavery Quotes

Browse 2495 quotes about Slavery.

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Slavery Quotes

“Whatever I had read as a child about the saints had thrilled me. I could see the nobility of giving one's life for the sick, the maimed, the leper. But there was another question in my mind. Why was so much done in remedying the evil instead of avoiding it in the first place? Where were the saints to try to change the social order, not just to minister to the slaves, but to do away with slavery?”

GivingTryingMindFirstsChildrenDoneOrderEvilSocialSickSlaverySlaveSaintMinistersAvoidingNobilitySocial OrderLeper
Author:Dorothy Day
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“It is easy to understand why the law is used by the legislator to destroy in varying degrees among the rest of the people, their personal independence by slavery, their liberty by oppression, and their property by plunder. This is done for the benefit of the person who makes the law, and in proportion to the power that he holds.”

PeoplePersonsDoneLawUsedEasyLibertyDegreesBenefitsIndependenceSlaveryPropertyOppressionProportionLegislatorsPlunderPersonal Independence
Author:Frederic Bastiat
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“Theoretically, you can make, obviously, a powerful argument that centuries of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination are the primary cause for all those gaps. That those were wrongs done to the black community as a whole, and black families specifically, and that in order to close that gap, a society has a moral obligation to make a large, aggressive investment, even if it's not in the form of individual reparations checks, but in the form of a Marshall Plan, in order to close those gaps. It is easy to make that theoretical argument.”

IfsDoneWholeFormOrderIndividualCausesEasyBlackCommunityPowerfulMoralPlansCenturyArgumentSlaveryInvestmentDiscriminationChecksObligationPrimariesGapsAggressiveTheoreticalCrowJim CrowReparationsMoral ObligationBlack CommunityBlack FamilyMarshall Plan
Author:Barack Obama
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“Social rules are susceptible to moral analysis. This is, again, relatively familiar in the domestic case, where we now condemn slavery as unjust. And when we affirm this judgment, we're not merely saying that all those people who owned slaves were unethical people; they shouldn't have done that. We do believe this, but that's only part of the point. We also believe that the fugitive slave laws were unjust.”

PeopleBelieveDoneLawSocialMoralCasesJudgmentSlaverySlaveFamiliarAnalysisUnjustSusceptibleFugitiveUnethical
Author:Thomas Pogge
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“I never heard weeping like that before or after; not from a child, nor a man wounded in the palm, nor a tortured man, nor a girl dragged off to slavery from a taken city. If you heard the woman you most hate in the world weep so, you would go to comfort her. You would fight your way through fire and spears to reach her. And I knew who wept, and what had been done to her, and who had done it.”

IfsMenWorldWayChildrenDoneHateGirlFightingCitiesTakenFireHeardComfortSlaveryWoundedPalmsWeepingSpears
Author:C. S. Lewis
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“Let there be no compromise on the question of extending slavery. If there be, all our labor is lost, and, ere long, must be done again.”

IfsLongDoneLostLaborSlaveryCompromiseExtendingNo Compromise
Book:The Modern Library Civil War Bookshelf 5-Book Bundle: Personal Memoirs, Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Red Badge of Courage, Jefferson Davis: The Essential Writings, The Life and Writings of Abraham Lincoln
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“O neglectful Nature, wherefore art thou thus partial, becoming to some of thy children a tender and benignant mother, to others a most cruel and ruthless stepmother? I see thy children given into slavery to others without ever receiving any benefit, and in lieu of any reward for the services they have done for them they are repaid by the severest punishments.”

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Book:Note Books: Arranged and Rendered Into English, with Introd
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“Grant began by expressing a hope that the war would soon be over, and Lee replied by stating that he had for some time been anxious to stop the further effusion of blood, and he trusted that everything would now be done to restore harmony and conciliate the people of the South. He said the emancipation of the Negroes would be no hindrance to the restoring of relations between the two sections of the country, as it would probably not be the desire of the majority of the Southern people to restore slavery then, even if the question were left open to them.”

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Author:Horace Porter
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“How can one be compelled to accept slavery? I simply refuse to do the master's bidding. He may torture me, break my bones to atoms and even kill me. He will then have my dead body, not my obedience. Ultimately, therefore, it is I who am the victor and not he, for he has failed in getting me to do what he wanted done.”

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Book:The Essential Gandhi: An Anthology of His Writings on His Life, Work, and Ideas
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“I wish most anxiously to see my much loved America - it is the Country from whence all reformations must originally spring - I despair of seeing an Abolition of the infernal trafic in Negroes - we must push that matter further on your side the water - I wish that a few well instructed Negroes could be sent among their Brethren in Bondage, for until they are enabled to take their own part nothing will be done.”

WellsCountryMatterDoneAmericaWishSidesWaterSeeingDespairSpringSlaveryBondageReformationYour SideBrethrenAbolition
Book:Thomas Paine: Collected Writings: Common Sense / The American Crisis / Rights of: (Library of America #76)
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“It had been happy for me if I could have lived a private life in peace and plenty, enjoying all the happiness that results from a well-tempered society founded on mutual esteem. But the injury done my country, and the chains of slavery forging for all posterity, calls me forth to defend our common rights, and repel the bold invaders of the sons of freedom.”

IfsWellsCountryDoneEnjoyResultsCommonRightsSonSlaveryEsteemChainsPlentyIf I CouldInjuryMutualCall MePrivate LifePosterityInvadersForging
Author:Nathanael Greene
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“The incomparable James Walvin has done it again: he has crafted a beautifully written and deeply informed single volume history of the Atlantic slave trade and its consequences on three continents. This book is full of fresh ideas and astounding detail; it is at once great storytelling, punctuated with real people and voices, and an unblinking analysis of numerous great questions and paradoxes about the power of slavery in creating the Atlantic world over four centuries.”

PeopleWorldBookIdeasRealDoneThreeVoiceFourWrittenCenturyCreatingConsequenceSlaveryTradeSlaveDetailsStorytellingAnalysisParadoxContinentsVolumeIncomparableSlave TradeFresh Ideas
Author:David W. Blight
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“Many Southern Plantation owners were working towards the day when they could convert their investment to more profitable industrial production as had been done in the North, and others felt that freemen who were paid wages would be more efficient than slaves who had no incentive to work. For the present, however, they were stuck with the system they inherited. They felt that a complete and sudden abolition of slavery with no transition period would destroy their economy and leave many of the former slaves to starve - all of which actually happened in due course.”

WarDoneWould BeCoursesFeltEconomyHappenedPeriodsPaidSlaverySlaveInvestmentProductionsDuesStuckFormerCivil WarOwnersTransitionSouthernEfficientWagesIncentivesProfitableAbolitionFreemanPlantationsAbolition Of Slavery
Author:G. Edward Griffin
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“At times some people use force or fraud to take from others without willful, voluntary consent. Normally, the initiation of force to take life is murder, to take liberty is slavery, and to take property is theft. It is the same whether these actions are done by one person acting alone, by the many acting against a few, or even by officials with fine hats and titles.”

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Author:Ken Schoolland
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“The arc of history is longer than human vision. It bends. We abolished slavery, we granted universal suffrage. We have done hard things before. And every time it took a terrible fight between people who could not imagine changing the rules, and those who said, 'We already did. We have made the world new.' The hardest part will be to convince yourself of the possibilities, and hang on.”

PeopleWorldHumansMadeSaidHardDoneFightingVisionImaginePossibilityTerribleUniversalSlaveryHardestGrantedConvinceArcsHard ThingsSuffrageUniversal Suffrage
Author:Barbara Kingsolver
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