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Slavery Quotes

Browse 2495 quotes about Slavery.

Slavery Quotes

“I endorse without reserve the much-abused sentiment of Gov. M'Duffie, that "slavery is the corner stone of our Republican edifice;" while I repudiate, as ridiculously absurd, that much-lauded but nowhere accredited dogma of Mr. Jefferson, that "all men are born equal.”

Men Born Republican Equal Stones Slavery Corners Absurd Sentiments Dogma Reserves Edifice

Book:Selections from the Letters and Speeches of the Hon. James H. Hammond: Of South Carolina

Source: Selections from the Letters and Speeches of the Hon. James H. Hammond: Of South Carolina

“In America, you can segregate the people, but the problems will travel. From slavery to equal rights, from state suppression of dissent to crime, drugs and unemployment, I can't think of a supposedly Black issue that hasn't wasted the original Black target group and then spread like measles to outlying white experience.”

Source: On call: political essays

“When the passage "All men are born free and equal," when that passage was being written were not some of the signers legalised owners of slaves?”

Men Born Written Equal Slavery Slave Owners Passages Born Free

Book:Billy Budd, and other prose pieces, edited by R. W. Weaver

Source: Billy Budd, and other prose pieces, edited by R. W. Weaver

“..remember that under our institutions there was no middle ground for the negro race between slavery and equal citizenship.”

Remember Race Middle Equal Institutions Slavery Citizenship Middle Ground

Book:The works of James Abram Garfield. (2 Volumes) Volume 2

Source: The works of James Abram Garfield. (2 Volumes) Volume 2

“The royalists of the economic order have conceded that political freedom was the business of the government, but they have maintained that economic slavery was nobody's business. They granted that the government could protect the citizen in his right to vote, but they denied that the government could do anything to protect the citizen in his right to work and his right to live. Today we stand committed to the proposition that freedom is no half-and-half affair. If the average citizen is guaranteed equal opportunity in the polling place, he must have equal opportunity in the market place.”

Source: The Essential Franklin Delano Roosevelt

“The Bible has lost every major battle it has ever fought. The Bible was quoted to defend slavery and the bible lost. The Bible was quoted to keep women silent, and the Bible lost. And the Bible is being quoted to deny homosexuals their equal rights, and the Bible will lose.”

Lost Loses Rights Battle Equal Majors Slavery Silent Deny Homosexual Equal Rights

Author:John Shelby Spong

“Even the Declaration of Independence starts out all men are created equal, so I see my advocacy as part of an effort to make the equality principle everything the founders would have wanted it to be if they weren't held back by the society in which they lived and particularly the shame of slavery.”

Ifs Men Wanted Effort Principles Equal Shame Independence Slavery Founders Declaration Declaration Of Independence Advocacy

Author:Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“The problem for those who assert biblical authority in support of traditional definitions of marriage is that one could, with equal validity, assert that the lending of money or certain kinds of haircuts are forbidden by God, or that slavery and the subjugation of women are authorized by the Lord.”

Kind Problem Certain Lord Support Equal Authority Slavery Definitions Traditional Biblical Forbidden Validity Haircuts Lending Subjugation

Author:Jon Meacham

“There is in fact a manly and legitimate passion for equality that spurs all men to wish to be strong and esteemed. This passion tends to elevate the lesser to the rank of the greater. But one also finds in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to want to bring the strong down to their level, and which reduces men to preferring equality in servitude to inequality in freedom.”

“I have conceived a higher opinion of the natural capacities of the black race than I had ever before entertained. Their apprehension seems as quick, their memory as strong, and their docility in every respect equal to that of white children.”

Children Seems Strong Black Natural Memories White Race Opinion Higher Equal Capacity Slavery Apprehension Black Race

Book:A Benjamin Franklin Reader

Source: A Benjamin Franklin Reader

“But whatever be their degree of talent it is no measure of their rights. Because Sir Isaac Newton was superior to others in understanding, he was not therefore lord of the person or property of others. On this subject they are gaining daily in the opinions of nations, and hopeful advances are making towards their re- establishment on an equal footing with the other colors of the human family.”

Source: Thomas Jefferson: A Chronology of His Thoughts

“The division of the United States into federations of equal force was decided long before the Civil War by the high financial powers of Europe. These bankers were afraid that the United States, if they remained in one block and as one nation, would attain economic and financial independence, which would upset their financial domination over the world. The voice of the Rothschilds prevailed... Therefore they sent their emissaries into the field to exploit the question of slavery and to open an abyss between the two sections of the Union.”

“Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.”

Years Two Whole America Moral Five Policy Equal Hundred Slavery Debt Thirty Five Years Fifty Racist Sixty Ninety Housing Crow Jim Crow Separate But Equal

Author:Ta-Nehisi Coates

“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.”

“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.”

“America is the promised land, because each generation bequeathed to its children a promise, a promise that they might not come to enjoy but which they fully expected their offspring to fulfill. So the words 'all men are created equal' took a life of its own, ultimately destined to end slavery and enfranchise women. And the words 'equal protection' and 'due process' inevitably led to the end of the words 'separate but equal,' ensuring that the walls of segregation would crumble, whether at the lunch counter or at the voting booth.”

Source: Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics

“The American states have gone far in assisting the progress of truth; but they have stopped short of perfection. They ought to have given every honest citizen an equal right to enjoy his religion and an equal title to all civil emoluments, without obliging him to tell his religion. Every interference of the civil power in regulating opinion, is an impious attempt to take the business of the Deity out of his own hands; and every preference given to any religious denomination, is so far slavery and bigotry.”

Source: Sketches of American Policy Under the Following Heads: I. Theory of Government, II. Governments on the Eastern Continent, III. American States, Or, the Principles of the American Constitutions Contrasted with Those of European States, IV. Plan of Policy for Improving the Advantages and Perpetuating the Union of the American States

“It is up to each and every one of us to raise our voice against crimes that deprive countless victims of their liberty, dignity and human rights. We have to work together to realize the equal rights promised to all by the United Nations Charter. And we must collectively give meaning to the words of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that "no one shall be held in slavery or servitude"”

“Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.... The subjection of individuals will increase amongst democratic nations, not only in the same proportion as their equality, but in the same proportion as their ignorance.”

Individual Nations Ignorance Equal Increase Slavery Democratic Equality Proportion Subjection Enamored

Author:Alexis de Tocqueville

“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

“Every member of the society spies on the rest, and it is his duty to inform against them. All are slaves and equal in their slavery... The great thing about it is equality... Slaves are bound to be equal.”

Duty Equal Members Slavery Prison Slave Bounds Equality Great Things Spy

Author:Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Each man has an equal social right to multiply his power of motion by all the social factors of civilization. Private property in any of these factors is inconsistent with this fundamental right; it must, obviously, prove a source of economic despotism and industrial slavery.”

Men Social Economic Source Civilization Prove Equal Fundamentals Slavery Property Factors Tyrants Despotism Private Property Inconsistent

Author:Daniel De Leon