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Slavery Quotes

Browse 2495 quotes about Slavery.

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Slavery Quotes

“[O]ne must feel a grave disquiet, when the legitimate inspiration is not there; when the subject or topic of ‘research’ is imposed, or is ‘found’ for a candidate out of someone else’s bag of curiosities, or is thought by a committee to be a sufficient exercise for a degree. Whatever may have been found useful in other spheres, there is a distinction between accepting the willing labour of many humble persons in building an English house and the erection of a pyramid with the sweat of degree-slaves.”

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Book:The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays
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“When they left for South Africa to work on a farm, she thought they were escaping. She thought, as many of them did, that it was a way out. The new land showed promise: Indian indentured labor had been abolished, opportunities were arising in the growing Indian settlements in Natal and Transvaal, neighbors and friends were all leaving. They said it was better in Africa for them. But her family realized too late, the British were the same whether they were in South Africa or India; their brown skin would always hold the same currency. Her family still lived in poverty, they were punished for their skin color, and they were still answerable to the white man for everything they did. It was still slavery, just in different packaging.”

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Book:The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years
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“In the days of slavery and the underground railroads, there lived on the banks of the Ohio River near Gallipolis, a noted Democrat named Judge French, who said to some anti-slavery friends that he should like them to bring to his office the first runaway negro that crossed the river, bound northward by the underground. He couldn't understand why they wished to run away. This was done, and the following conversation took place: Judge: "So you have run away from Kentucky. Bad master, I suppose?" Slave: "Oh, no, Judge; very good, kind massa." Judge: "He worked you too hard?" Slave: "No, sah, never overworked myself all my life." Judge, hesitatingly: "He did not give you enough to eat?" Slave: "Not enough to eat down in Kaintuck? Oh, Lor', plenty to eat." Judge: "He did not clothe you well?" Slave: "Good enough clothes for me, Judge." Judge: "You hadn't a comfortable home?" Slave: "Oh, Lor', makes me cry to think of my pretty little cabin down dar in old Kaintuck." Judge, after a pause: "You had a good, kind master, you were not overworked, plenty to eat, good clothes, fine home. I don't see why the devil you wished to run away." Slave: "Well, Judge, I lef de situation down dar open. You kin go rite down and git it." The Judge had seen a great light.”

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Author:Andrew Carnegie
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“Following the 2017 attack in Charlottesville and the rise in white-nationalist terrorism over the past few years, Niya sees her work not just as an extension of her personal and intellectual commitments but also as a political commitment. She thinks Monticello has an important role in helping people reckon with who they are in relation to this country's history. "I think people come to us because they're grappling with their own identity," she said. "And Monticello in particular is a place that is so intimately connected to who we are, or who we believe we are, as Americans with freedom and democracy. Yet it's also a place of bondage, and now people are really, really grappling with that question. I think it makes our work here that much more important, that we are able, maybe, to navigate people through the conversation.”

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Book:How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America
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“I thought about how Juneteenth is a holiday that inspires so much celebration, born from circumstances imbued with so much tragedy. Enslavers in Texas, and across the South, attempted to keep Black people in bondage for months, and theoretically years, after their freedom had been granted. Juneteenth, then, is both a day to solemnly remember what this country has done to Black Americans and a day to celebrate all that Black Americans have overcome. It is a reminder that each day this country must consciously make a decision to move toward freedom for all of its citizens, and that this is something that must be done proactively; it will not happen on its own. The project of freedom, Juneteenth reminds us, is precarious, and we should regularly remind ourselves how many people who came before us never got to experience it, and how many people there are still waiting.”

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Book:How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America
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“While I was fighting, I heard other people speaking in the name of freedom, and the more they defended this unique right, the more enslaved they seemed to be to their parents' wishes, to a marriage in which they had promised to stay with the other person 'for the rest of their lives', to the bathroom scales, to their diet, to half- finished projects, to lovers to whom they were incapable of saying 'No' or 'It's over, to weekends when they were obliged to have lunch with people they didn't even like. Slaves to luxury, to the appearance of luxury, to the appearance of the appearance of luxury. Slaves to a life they had not chosen, but which they had decided to live because someone had managed to convince them that it was all for the best.”

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Book:The Zahir
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“In consonance with the biblical depiction of these early Israelites, the Jewish tradition regards the generation of the desert as a pathetic group. Reared as slaves, they retain throughout their lives a 'slave mentality.' When Egyptian troops, whom they greatly outnumber, pursue them, it never occurs to them to say, 'Let's fight back!' Instead, they decry Moses' bringing them into the desert to die. When there are shortages of provisions, they don't think, 'Is there anything we can do for ourselves?'Instead, like children, they turn on Moses and God and demand that they set everything right.”

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Book:Biblical Literacy
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“The silver trump of freedom had roused my soul to eternal wakefulness. Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever. It was heard in every sound, and seen in every thing. It was ever present to torment me with a sense of my wretched condition. I saw nothing without seeing it, I heard nothing without hearing it, and felt nothing without feeling it. It looked from every star, it smiled in every, calm, breathed in every wind, and moved in every storm.”

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Book:Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
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“A human, caught under the oppression of a foreign nation in his/her own country, can be willingly to risk his/her life in order to achieve freedom. To call this act a self-sacrifice, one would have to presume that the person didn’t mind living as a slave of the British. The selfishness of a person who is willing to die, if necessary, fighting for his/her freedom, lies in the fact that he/she is unwilling to go on living in a world where he/she is no longer able to act on his/her own rules and regulations, that is, a world where rudimentary human conditions of existence are no longer possible.”

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Book:Prescription: Treating India's Soul
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“Many if not most slaves would have each readily jumped, and many if not most slaves would each readily jump, at the opportunity to be a master, if such an opportunity presents or had presented itself.”

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Book:The Use and Misuse of Children
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“Nobody can return to you something that was never yours, to begin with. Let’s trace back to the history of your race: the humans were made for slavery and were found faulty for that purpose. They showed immense energy and willpower only when confronted against tremendous obstacles with no weapons in their hands. With those bare hands, and the wits that exceeded even those of their creators and equalled the ones of mighty gods, they could break mountains. Once the humans earned at least a bit of benevolence from their creators, though, they’d immediately turn into lazy drunkards feasting upon the luxuries of life. They were quite haughty creatures, at that – one could never make them work without posing a certain purpose before their eyes. They should be given an aim they approved of, or else, they’d move no finger! Yet, if such necessities were met, they’d begin to loaf around. Forbidding them to taste those luxuries? Nay, they obeyed not! Hence, their creators cast them down on Earth – a planet inhabited by many other faulty experiments of different alien species, so that their lives would end. Yet even here, the humans defied their creators – instead of dying out, they adapted to the environment they were cast in, due to their boundless wits and the unexplainable willpower that no other species could ever possess. They mated the local species whom they could more or less find a common language with, killed off the obstacles, and conquered the planet as their own. The conquering ambitions of their creators, the boundless wisdom of their gods, and the primal instincts of Earthly nature – all of it meddled in these extraordinary creatures. They were full of instability, unpredictability, wild dreams, and rotten primitivism. Which side they would develop, depended entirely upon their choice. Aye, they had proven faulty to their creators, yet had attained the perfect treasure they required – the freedom. Could they make use of it? – Nay, certainly not… at least not many of them. There are certain individuals among the human race, who are able to well balance their mixed-up nature and grow into worthy people that merit our godly benevolence. However, most of them are quite an interesting bunch whom an ambitious man like me can make good use of. I am half-human with godly and angelic descendance, so I guess, I am worthy to be their sole ruler, their only saviour, their treasured shepherd… The shepherds too make use of their sheep – they guide them, then to consume some of them for wool and meat. Shepherds do not help the sheep for granted – they use their potential to its fullest. I shall be the same kind of a god – I shall help these magnificent creatures to achieve the wildest of their dreams but will use their powers for my own benefit. These poor creatures cannot define their potential alone, they cannot decide what’s the best and the fittest for them! I can achieve that. Free human souls? – Nay, they need no freedom. What they need, is to serve the rightful master, and that rightful master I shall be.”

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Book:Galaxy Pirates
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“All who are not lunatics are agreed about certain things. That it is better to be alive than dead, better to be adequately fed than starved, better to be free than a slave. Many people desire those things only for themselves and their friends; they are quite content that their enemies should suffer. These people can be refuted by science: mankind has become so much one family that we cannot insure our own prosperity except by insuring that of everyone else. If you wish to be happy yourself, you must resign yourself to seeing others also happy.”

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Author:Bertrand Russell
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“It is not a person or situation that affects your life; it is the meaning you give to that person or situation, which influences your emotions and actions. Your choice is to change the meaning you gave it or to change your response, in order to create the outcome you want.”

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Author:Shannon L. Alder
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