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Slavery Quotes

Browse 2495 quotes about Slavery.

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Slavery Quotes

“He who esteems the Virginia reel A bait to draw saints from their spiritual weal, And regards the quadrille as a far greater knavery Than crushing His African children with slavery, Since all who take part in a waltz or cotillon Are mounted for hell on the devil's own pillion, Who, as every true orthodox Christian well knows, Approaches the heart through the door of the toes.”

KnowsWellsHeartChildrenChristianSpiritualHellGreaterDoorsApproachDrawsDevilRegardSlaveryDancingSaintEsteemCrushOrthodoxToesOrthodox ChristianVirginiaBaitVery TrueWaltzKnavery
Book:Delphi Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell (Illustrated)
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“This is what the government is, has always been, the creator and defender of privilege; the organization of oppression and revenge. To hope that it can ever become anything else is the vainest of delusions. They tell you that Anarchy, the dream of social order without government, is a wild fancy. The wildest dream that ever entered the heart of man is the dream that mankind can ever help itself through an appeal to law, or to come to any order that will not result in slavery wherein there is any excuse for government.”

MenHeartHelpingDreamGovernmentLawOrderSocialResultsMankindOrganizationSlaveryPrivilegeCreatorExcuseRevengeOppressionAppealsFancyDelusionAnarchyDefendersSocial OrderWildest Dreams
Author:Voltairine de Cleyre
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“The Southern newspapers, with their advertisements of negro sales and personal descriptions of fugitive slaves, supply details of misery that it would be difficult for imagination to exceed. Scorn, derision, insult, menace - the handcuff, the last - the tearing away of children from parents, of husbands from wives - the weary trudging in droves along the common highways, the labor of body, the despair of mind, the sickness of heart - these are the realities which belong to the system, and form the rule, rather that the exception, in the slave's experience.”

MindHeartChildrenBodyRealityWould BeLastsFormParentDifficultImaginationCommonWifeHusbandDespairLaborSlaveryMiserySlaveDetailsNewspapersInsultSicknessDescriptionExceptionSouthernWearyHighwaysScornExceedMenaceAdvertisementsFugitiveParent ChildDerisionHusband Wife
Book:Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-1839
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“I envy neither the heart nor the head of any legislator who has been born to an inheritance of privileges, who has behind him agesof education, dominion, civilization, and Christianity, if he stands opposed to the passage of a national education bill, whose purpose is to secure education to the children of those who were born under the shadow of institutions which made it a crime to read.”

IfsHeartChildrenHas BeensMadePurposeReadingBornBehindsChristianityCrimeCivilizationShadowInstitutionsSlaveryBillsPrivilegeEnvySecureMade ItPassagesInheritanceDominionLegislators
Author:Frances Harper
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“A civilization built on dualism and war within and between persons, one that puts its most creative minds and its best engineers to sadistic work building more and more destructive weapons, is no civilization at all. It needs a radical transformation from the heart outwards. It needs to outgrow and outlaw war just as in the last century it outlawed slavery. The human race has outgrown war, but it hardly knows it yet.”

KnowsNeedsMindHumansHeartPersonsWarLastsRaceCreativeCenturyBuildingCivilizationWeaponsBuiltTransformationSlaveryRadicalHuman RaceDestructiveEngineersDisarmamentOutlawCreative MindSadisticDualism
Author:Matthew Fox
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“In studying food, you embrace everything. Food exposes the long, complex history of the South - slavery, Jim Crow segregation, class struggle, extreme hunger, sexism, and disenfranchisement. These issues are revealed through food encounters, and they contrast this with the pleasure and the inventiveness of Southern cuisine. Food is always at the heart of daily life in the South.”

HeartLongPleasureStruggleStudySlaveryEmbraceHungerDaily LifeSexismSouthernContrastSegregationCrowJim CrowInventiveness
Author:Marcie Cohen Ferris
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“Women and LBGT people have the advantage that they are everybody's son, daughter, cousin, nephew, aunt, uncle. They are in a position to change hearts, and you saw it happen actually. African-Americans, not so much. They are separated from the white oppressive population by geography, housing, segregation, centuries of slavery. There is a tremendous wall between black America and white. I would say you open the door with the force of law, and then you can start to change hearts.”

PeopleHeartBlackSonWallDaughterSlaveryCousinSegregationAuntGeographyNephew
Author:Linda Hirshman
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“It is a sad hardship and slavery to people who live in towns, that in their movements they know of one dimension only; they walk along the line as if they were led on a string. The transition from the line to the plane into the two dimensions, when you wander across a field or through a wood, is a splendid liberation to the slaves, like the French Revolution. But in the air you are taken into the full freedom of the three dimensions; after long ages of exile and dreams the homesick heart throws itself into the arms of space.”

PeopleIfsKnowsHeartLongTwoDreamAgeThreeLinesSpaceWalksTakenAirMovementFieldsRevolutionArmsTownsSlaverySlaveWoodsWanderLiberationPlanesDimensionsStringsHardshipTransitionExileSplendidFrench RevolutionHomesickThree Dimensions
Book:Out of Africa
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“The scheme, my dear Marqs. which you propose as a precedent, to encourage the emancipation of the black people of this Country from that state of Bondage in wch. they are held, is a striking evidence of the benevolence of your Heart. I shall be happy to join you in so laudable a work.”

PeopleHeartCountryStatesBlackEvidenceSlaveryDearBlack PeopleSchemesBondageProposeBenevolenceEmancipationPrecedent
Book:Affectionately Yours, George Washington: A Self-portrait in Letters of Friendship
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“There is, in fact, a manly and lawful passion for equality which excites men to wish all to be powerful and honored. This passion tends to elevate the humble to the rank of the great; but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level, and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom.”

MenHumansHeartFactsPassionWishLevelsPowerfulTasteWeakSlaveryEqualityHumbleInequalityHuman HeartHonoredManlyDepraved
Book:Democracy in America
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“Repeal the Missouri Compromise - repeal all compromises - repeal the Declaration of Independence - repeal all past history, you still can not repeal human nature. It still will be the abundance of man's heart, that slavery extension is wrong; and out of the abundance of his heart, his mouth will continue to speak.”

MenHumansHeartStillsPastSpeakChangeHuman NatureMouthsIndependenceSlaveryCompromiseAbundanceCan NotDeclarationExtensionsDeclaration Of IndependenceMissouri
Author:Abraham Lincoln
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“Life is not given to us that we might live idly without work. No, our life is a struggle and a journey. Goof should struggle with evil; truth should struggle with falsehood; freedom should struggle with slavery; love should struggle with hatred. Life is movement, a walk along the way of life to the fulfillment of those ideas which illuminate us, both in our intellect and in our hearts, with divine light.”

WayShouldHeartIdeasLightMightLife IsEvilGivenWalksStruggleOur LivesJourneyMovementDivineHatredSlaveryIntellectFulfillmentFalsehoodLife Is A StruggleGoofsDivine Light
Author:Giuseppe Mazzini
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“Foolish man, what do you bemoan, and what do you fear? Wherever you look there is an end of evils. You see that yawning precipice? It leads to liberty. You see that flood, that river, that well? Liberty houses within them. You see that stunted, parched, and sorry tree? From each branch liberty hangs. Your neck, your throat, your heart are all so many ways of escape from slavery [...] Do you enquire the road to freedom? You shall find it in every vein of your body.”

HeartEvilFearLibertyTreeSlaverySuicideFoolishThroatFloodFoolishnessEscapeEndRiverRoadPrecipiceWellNeckBranchHangVeinBemoan
Author:A. Alvarez
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