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Slavery Quotes

Browse 2495 quotes about Slavery.

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Slavery Quotes

“Plato defined a slave as one who accepts from another the purposes which control his conduct. This condition obtains even where there is no slavery in the legal sense. It is found wherever men are engaged in activity which is socially serviceable, but whose service they do not understand and have no personal interest in.”

MenPurposeFoundInterestAcceptingConditionsActivitySlaverySlaveDefinedEngagedPlatoPersonal Interest
Book:Democracy And Education
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“All too often, as we know from experience, people do not choose life; they do not accept the gospel of life, but let themselves be led by ideologies and ways of thinking that block life, that do not respect life, because they are dictated by selfishness, self-interest, profit, power and pleasure and not by love. ... As a result, the Living God is replaced by fleeting human idols, which offer the intoxication of a flash of freedom, but in the end bring new forms of slavery and death.”

PeopleThinkingKnowsWayHumansEndsSelfFormInterestPleasureResultsAcceptingOffersSlaveryProfitBlockIdeologySelfishnessIdolsFlashReplacedFleetingSelf InterestWay Of ThinkingIntoxicationChoose LifeRespect Life
Author:Pope Francis
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“Slavery destroys, or vitiates, or pollutes, whatever it touches. No interest of society escapes the influence of its clinging curse. It makes Southern religion a stench in the nostrils of Christendom; it makes Southern politics a libel upon all the principles of republicanism; it makes Southern literature a travesty upon the honorable profession of letters.”

LiteratureInterestPrinciplesInfluenceLettersSlaveryProfessionCurseSouthernHonorableClingingLibelChristendomRepublicanismTravesty
Book:Ante-bellum writings of George Fitzhugh and Hinton Rowan Helper on slavery
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“Let us hear the dangers of thralldom to our consciences from ignorance, extreme poverty, and dependence; in short, from civil and political slavery. Let us see delineated before us the true map of man. Let us hear the dignity of his nature, and the noble rank he holds among the works of God-that consenting to slavery is a sacrilegious breach of trust, as offensive in the sight of God as it is derogatory from our own honor or interest or happiness-and that God Almighty has promulgated from heaven liberty, peace, and goodwill to man!”

MenPoliticalHeavenPeaceInterestLibertyPovertyDangerIgnoranceHonorConscienceDignitySightSlaveryExtremesNobleMapsAlmightyOffensiveDependenceGoodwillBreachExtreme PovertyDerogatorySacrilegiousBreach Of Trust
Author:John Adams
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“By taking out a loan, I am committing myself to years of interest repayments, and therefore to years of wage slavery. And the UK has been borrowing like crazy since 1694, when the Bank of England was invented. This means that we are locked into high taxation to pay for 300 years of wars and other costly and generally disastrous state enterprises.”

YearsMeanHas BeensWarStatesInterestPayCrazyEnglandSlaveryEnterpriseLockedTaxationLoanBorrowingRepayment
Author:Tom Hodgkinson
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“As for the South, it is enough to say that perhaps eighty per cent. of her armies were neither slave-holders, nor had the remotest interest in the institution. No other proof, however, is needed than the undeniable fact that at any period of the war from its beginning to near its close the South could have saved slavery by simply laying down its arms and returning to the Union.”

WarEnoughFactsInterestArmsNeededPeriodsArmyInstitutionsSlaveryUnionsSlaveSouthProofSavedCentsEightyLaying Down
Book:Reminiscences of the Civil War
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“I suspect, too, that the modern debates represent the effort of candidates with widely-varying constituencies and special interests to please to tip the hat as quickly as possible to as many of the constituencies and interests as possible. That leaves no time for big-picture issues. Contrast this with Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas, where the subject was only ever slavery, and the discussion went right to the bedrock of what a democracy is all about.”

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Author:Allen C. Guelzo
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“Grandmother pointed out my brother Perry, my sister Sarah, and my sister Eliza, who stood in the group. I had never seen my brother nor my sisters before; and, though I had sometimes heard of them, and felt a curious interest in them, I really did not understand what they were to me, or I to them. We were brothers and sisters, but what of that? Why should they be attached to me, or I to them? Brothers and sisters were by blood; but slavery had made us strangers. I heard the words brother and sisters, and knew they must mean something; but slavery had robbed these terms of their true meaning.”

ShouldMeanMadeSometimesFeltTermInterestHeardGroupsBloodBrotherSlaveryStrangerCuriousMy BrotherGrandmotherMy SisterBrothers And SistersTrue Meaning
Book:My Bondage and My Freedom ...
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“Our government, National and State, must be freed from the sinister influence or control of special interests. Exactly as the special interests of cotton and slavery threatened our political integrity before the Civil War, so now the great special business interests too often control and corrupt the men and methods of government for their own profit. We must drive the special interests out of politics.”

MenWarStatesGovernmentPoliticalInterestInfluenceSpecialIntegrityMethodSlaveryProfitCivil WarThreatenedCottonSpecial InterestsSinister
Book:The Autobiography of Theodore Roosevelt: Condensed from the Original Ed., Supplemented by Letters, Speeches, and Other Writings, and Edited with an Introd. by Wayne Andrews
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“It is due to justice; due to humanity; due to truth; due to the sympathies of our nature; in fine, to our character as a people, both abroad and at home, that they should be considered, as much as possible, in the light of human beings, and not as mere property. As such, they are acted on by our laws, and have an interest in our laws. They may be considered as making a part, though a degraded part, of the families to which they belong.”

PeopleShouldHumansMayCharacterHomeLightLawHumanityInterestJusticeHuman BeingsFineSlaveryPropertyMereDues
Book:Selected Writings of James Madison
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“The real difference of interests, lay not between large and small, but between the Northern and Southern states. The institution of slavery and its consequences formed a line of discrimination.”

RealStatesInterestDifferencesLinesConsequenceInstitutionsSlaveryLaysDiscriminationSouthern
Book:The Constitution a pro-slavery compact, or, Extracts from the Madison papers, etc
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