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Slavery Quotes

Browse 2495 quotes about Slavery.

Slavery Quotes

“When I think of this life I have led; the desolation of solitude it has been; the masoned, walled-town of a Captain's exclusiveness, which admits but small entrance to any sympathy from the green country without - oh, weariness! heaviness! Guinea-coast slavery of solitary command!”

Thinking Life Has Beens Country Solitude Towns Slavery Green Command This Life Solitary Captains Coast Entrances Weariness Desolation Guinea Heaviness

Author:Herman Melville

“If we are made in some degree for others, yet in a greater are we made for ourselves. It were contrary to feeling and indeed ridiculous to suppose that a man had less rights in himself than one of his neighbors, or indeed all of them put together. This would be slavery, and not that liberty which the bill of rights has made inviolable, and for the preservation of which our government has been charged.”

Source: The writings of Thomas Jefferson: being his autobiography, correspondence, reports, messages, addresses, and other writings, official and private : published by the order of the Joint Committee of Congress on the Library, from the original manuscripts, deposited in the Department of State

“Individuals who have been wronged by unlawful racial discrimination should be made whole; but under our Constitution there can be no such thing as either a creditor or a debtor race. That concept is alien to the Constitution's focus upon the individual. ...To pursue the concept of racial entitlement - even for the most admirable and benign of purposes - is to reinforce and preserve for future mischief the way of thinking that produced race slavery, race privilege and race hatred. In the eyes of government, we are just one race here. It is American.”

“The Scriptures have been misused to defend bloody crusades and inquisitions; to support slavery, apartheid, and segregation; to sanction the physical and emotional abuse of women and children; to persecute Jews and other non-Christian people of faith; to support the holocaust of Hitler's Third Reich; to oppose medical science; to condemn inter-racial marriage; to execute women as witches; to excuse the violent racism of the Ku Klux Klan; to mobilize militias, white supremacy and neo-nazi movements; and to condone intolerance and discrimination against sexual minorities.”

“If a man really believes that God once upheld slavery; that he commanded soldiers to kill women and babes; that he believed in polygamy; that he persecuted for opinion's sake; that he will punish forever, and that he hates an unbeliever, the effect in my judgment will be bad. It always has been bad. This belief built the dungeons of the Inquisition. This belief made the Puritan murder the Quaker.”

Source: Interviews

“But, sir, the great cause of complaint now is the slavery question, and the questions growing out of it. If there is any other cause of complaint which has been influential in any quarter, to bring about the crisis which is now upon us; if any State or any people have made the troubles growing out of this question, a pretext for agitation instead of a cause of honest complaint, Virginia can have no sympathy whatever, in any such feeling, in any such policy, in any such attempt. It is the slavery question. Is it not so?”

People Ifs Has Beens Made War States Feelings Causes Growing Trouble Honest Policy Crisis Slavery Civil War Quarters Complaints Influential Virginia Pretext Agitation No Sympathy

Author:John Brown Baldwin

“The defence of human liberty against the aggressions of despotic power have been always the most efficient in States where domestic slavery was to prevail.”

Humans Has Beens War States Liberty Slavery Civil War Efficient Aggression Defence

Author:John C. Calhoun

“For ages, a deadly conflict has been waged between a few brave men and women of thought and genius upon the one side, and the great ignorant religious mass on the other. This is the war between Science and Faith. The few have appealed to reason, to honor, to law, to freedom, to the known, and to happiness here in this world. The many have appealed to prejudice, to fear, to miracle, to slavery, to the unknown, and to misery hereafter. The few have said "Think" The many have said "Believe!"”

Source: The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll

“When you consider that God could have commanded anything he wanted--anything!--the Ten [Commandments] have got to rank as one of the great missed moral opportunities of all time. How different history would have been had he clearly and unmistakably forbidden war, tyranny, taking over other people's countries, slavery, exploitation of workers, cruelty to children, wife-beating, stoning, treating women--or anyone--as chattel or inferior beings.”

“Slavery existed before the formation of this Union. It derived from the Constitution that recognition which it would not have enjoyed without the confederation. If the States had not united together, there would have been no obligation on adjoining States to regard any species of property unknown to themselves.”

Ifs Has Beens States Together United Constitution Regard Slavery Property Unions Species Obligation Recognition Enjoyed Formation Confederation

Author:Jefferson Davis

“Looking at the world as a whole, the drift for many decades has been not towards anarchy but towards the reimposition of slavery. We may be heading not for general breakdown but for an epoch as horribly stable as the slave empires of antiquity.”

World May Has Beens Whole Slavery Slave Decades Thrive Empires Anarchy Stable Breakdown Headings Antiquity Epoch

Book:The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell: In front of your nose, 1945-1950

Source: The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell: In front of your nose, 1945-1950

“It's as if all identity has been stolen from them, except their identity as slaves.”

Ifs Has Beens Identity Slavery Slave Stolen

Author:Kevin Bales

“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

“If you think your lot in life has been hard read “Up From Slavery” by Booker T. Washington, and you may see how fortunate you have been.”

Ifs Thinking May Has Beens Hard Gratitude Slavery Fortunate

Author:Napoleon Hill

“What we call soul has been around a long time. It comes out of a particular culture that is African in origin, but influenced by 250 years of slavery, as well as other forms of racial oppression.”

Years Wells Long Has Beens Soul Form Culture Particular Long Time Slavery Oppression

Author:Roy Ayers

“Since the nation's founding, African Americans repeatedly have been controlled through institutions such as slavery and Jim Crow, which appear to die, but then are reborn in new form, tailored to the needs and constraints of the time.”

Needs Has Beens Form Dies Nations Institutions Slavery African American Controlled Founding Constraints Crow Reborn Jim Crow Tailored

Book:The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

Source: The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“Although it has been fashionable to deny it, anti-slavery doctrines began to appear in Christian theology soon after the decline of Rome and were accompanied by the eventual disappearance of slavery in all but the fringes of Christian Europe. When Europeans subsequently instituted slavery in the New World, they did so over strenuous papal opposition, a fact that was conveniently 'lost' from history until recently. Finally, the abolition of New World slavery was initiated and achieved by Christian activists.”

“Above all I ask leaders and legislators and the entire international community above all to confront the reality of those who have been displaced by force, with effective projects and new approaches in order to protect their dignity, to improve the quality of their life and to face the challenges that are emerging from modern forms of persecution, oppression and slavery.”

“Legality alone is no guide for a moral people. There are many things in this world that have been, or are, legal but clearly immoral. Slavery was legal. Did that make it moral? South Africa’s apartheid, Nazi persecution of Jews, and Stalinist and Maoist purges were all legal, but did that make them moral?”

People World Has Beens Moral This World Slavery South Jew Guides South Africa Nazi Persecution Immoral Apartheid Legality

Author:Walter E. Williams

“As for those who think the Arab world promises freedom, the briefest study of its routine traditional treatment of blacks (slavery) and women (purdah) will provide relief from all illusion. If Malcolm X had been a black woman his last message to the world would have been entirely different. The brotherhood of Moslem men-all colors-may exist there, but part of the glue that holds them together is the thorough suppression of women.”

“To this must be added that the hiring of labor and the conduct of trade are concentrated in the hands of comparatively few; so that a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself.”

Men Littles Has Beens Hands Able Poor Numbers Rich Mass Labor Slavery Trade Lays Hiring Rich Man Yoke Small Numbers

Author:Pope Leo XIII

“Somehow it has been forgotten that the Republican party was founded in 1854 as an abolitionist movement, with one simple creed: that slavery is a violation of the rights of man.”

Men Has Beens Simple Party Rights Movement Republican Slavery Forgotten Creeds Republican Party Violation Abolitionist

Author:Elbert Guillory

“Today the large organization is lord and master, and most of its employees have been desensitized much as were the medieval peasants who never knew they were serfs.”

Has Beens Today Lord Masters Organization Slavery Employee Peasants Medieval Serfs

Author:Ralph Nader

“The proceedings of this House in 1790, in reference to petitions on the matter of the slave trade, and of slavery in the States, have been cited. It has been said that those petitions were not received.”

Has Beens Said Matter States House Slavery Trade Slave Proceeding Petitions Slave Trade

Author:Caleb Cushing