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Slavery Quotes

Browse 2495 quotes about Slavery.

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Slavery Quotes

“The 'nations,' as they are called, with whom our pretended ambassadors, secretaries, presidents, and senators profess to make treaties, are as much myths as our own. On general principles of law and reason, there are no such 'nations.' ... Our pretended treaties, then, being made with no legitimate or bona fide nations, or representatives of nations, and being made, on our part, by persons who have no legitimate authority to act for us, have intrinsically no more validity than a pretended treaty made by the Man in the Moon with the king of the Pleiades.”

MenPersonsMadeReasonLawIndividualNationsPresidentPrinciplesHe ManKingsMoonAuthoritySlaveryMythIndividualismRepresentativesSecretarySenatorsSovereigntyTreatiesAmbassadorsValidityIndividual RightsMan In The Moon
Book:The collected works of Lysander Spooner
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“Slavery was a central concern of governance form the time of the first nation-state. The Code of Hammurabi, the earliest know set of laws for governing an empire, prescribed death for anyone who harbored a fugitive or otherwise helped a slave to escape. The relationship between the law and bondage goes back even farther: Indeed, the oldest extant legal documents don't concern the sale of land, houses, or even animals, but slaves.”

KnowsFirstsStatesFormLawHouseNationsAnimalLandConcernSlaverySlaveCodeEmpiresDocumentsBondageGovernanceGoverningFugitive
Book:The Culture of Make Believe
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“It ought to concern every person, because it is a debasement of our common humanity. It ought to concern every community, because it tears at our social fabric. It ought to concern every business, because it distorts markets. It ought to concern every nation, because it endangers public health and fuels violence and organized crime. I’m talking about the injustice, the outrage, of human trafficking, which must be called by its true name - modern slavery.”

HumansPersonsHumanityNamesNationsSocialCommunityCommonTalkingViolenceModernCrimeTearsOughtConcernSlaveryInjusticeOrganizedFuelFabricOutragePublic HealthHuman TraffickingTraffickingOrganized CrimeCommon HumanityModern Slavery
Author:Barack Obama
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“A nation that will keep people in slavery for 244 years will "thingify" them and make them things. And therefore, they will exploit them and poor people generally economically. And a nation that will exploit economically will have to have foreign investments and everything else, and it will have to use its military might to protect them. All of these problems are tied together. What I'm saying today is that we must go from this convention and say, "America, you must be born again!"”

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Author:Martin Luther King, Jr.
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“Before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched across the pages of history the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence, we were here. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands.”

IfsFacesWinningNationsFailingDemandEternalPagesIndependenceSlaverySacredGods WillCrueltyOppositionPensHeritageDeclarationPilgrimDeclaration Of IndependenceMajesticWe Will WinPlymouth
Book:The Essential Martin Luther King, Jr.:
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“There is great fear expressed on all sides lest this war shall be made a war for the negro. I am willing that it shall be. It is awar to found an empire on the negro in slavery, and shame on us if we do not make it a war to establish the negro in freedom--against whom the whole nation, North and South, East and West, in one mighty conspiracy, has combined from the beginning.”

IfsMadeWarWholeFoundNationsSidesWillingShameSlaveryWestSouthEastEmpiresConspiracyEast And WestNorth And South
Author:Susan B. Anthony
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“If there be any man who thinks the ruin of a race of men a small matter, compared with the last decoration and completions of hisown comfort,--who would not so much as part with his ice- cream, to save them from rapine and manacles, I think I must not hesitate to satisfy that man that also his cream and vanilla are safer and cheaper by placing the negro nation on a fair footing than by robbing them.”

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Book:The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson
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“Disunion and civil war are at hand; and yet I fear disunion and war less than compromise. We can recover from them. The free States alone, if we must go on alone, will make a glorious nation. Twenty millions in the temperate zone, stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, full of vigor, industry, inventive genius, educated, and moral; increasing by immigration rapidly, and, above all, free--all free--will form a confederacy of twenty States scarcely inferior in real power to the unfortunate Union of thirty-three States which we had on the first of November.”

IfsFirstsWarRealStatesHandsFormThreePoliticsNationsMoralMillionsGoes OnIndustryGeniusTwentiesSlaveryUnionsImmigrationEducatedCompromiseThirtyCivil WarGloriousZoneFree WillUnfortunateInferiorsNovemberStretchingPacificVigorReal PowerFree State
Book:Conspicuous Gallantry: Civil War Diary and Letters of Rutherford B. Hayes (Abridged)
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“For centuries, faith has helped us overcome problems and helped us work to achieve a more perfect union. It has inspired the many leaders who played a key role in abolishing slavery, protecting civil rights and, hopefully one day, becoming a nation where all life from conception to natural death is protected.”

ProblemNationsNaturalPerfectLeaderRolesRightsAchieveCenturyKeysBecomingOne DayOvercomingSlaveryUnionsInspiredCivil RightsHopefullyConceptionProtectedNatural DeathAbolishing Slavery
Author:Marco Rubio
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“Activist Supreme Courts are not new. The Dred Scott decision in 1856, imposing slavery in free territories; the Plessy decision in 1896, imposing segregation on a private railroad company; the Korematsu decision in 1944, upholding Franklin Roosevelt’s internment of American citizens, mostly Japanese Americans; and the Roe decision in 1973, imposing abortion on the entire nation; are examples of the consequences of activist Courts and justices.”

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Author:Mark Levin
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“I have watched how steadily the general feeling, as shown at elections, has been rising against Slavery. What a proud thing for England if she is the first European nation which utterly abolishes it! I was told before leaving England that after living in slave countries all my opinions would be altered; the only alteration I am aware of is forming a much higher estimate of the negro character.”

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Book:Delphi Complete Works of Charles Darwin (Illustrated)
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“It was necessary to put the South at a moral disadvantage by transforming the contest from a war waged against states fighting for their indepdence into a war waged against states fighting for the maintenance and extension of slavery...and the world, it might be hoped, would see it as a moral war, not a political; and the sympathy of nations would begin to run for the North, not for the South.”

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Book:A History of The American Poeple
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“The whole history between Haiti and the Dominican Republic is complicated. We share the island of Hispaniola, and Haiti occupied the Dominican Republic for twenty-two years after 1804 for fear that the French and Spanish would come back and reinstitute slavery. So we have this unique situation of being two independent nations on the same island, but with each community having its own grievance.”

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Author:Edwidge Danticat
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“The population of African people in the United States is far in excess of six small European nations. Where we are going? We have to go back as best we can to where slavery and colonialism took us from. And they took us from a concept of nation management and nation maintenance. We have been so long away from home we unfortunately have forgotten how we ruled states before the foreigners got there.”

PeopleLongHas BeensStatesHomeNationsUnitedUnited StatesSixConceptsManagementSlaveryForgottenPopulationExcessColonialismForeignersMaintenanceAway From Home
Author:John Henrik Clarke
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“I can't say with certainty that slavery would have ended more quickly and more completely if the South had been allowed to leave and escaped former slaves had been allowed to remain free, and the North and the rest of the world had been a positive influence on the South. However, it's certainly a possibility that it would have ended sooner if the southern slave owners had agreed to a system of compensated emancipation and freed the slaves without a war and without secession, as most nations that ended slavery did. That absolutely would have been preferable to the Civil War as it happened.”

IfsWorldHas BeensI CanWarNationsHappenedInfluencePossibilitySlaverySlaveSouthCertaintyFormerCivil WarOwnersSouthernEmancipationSecessionPositive InfluenceSlave Owners
Author:David Swanson
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“You should see what our Founding Fathers used to say to each other and in the early part of our nation. But what they were able to do, especially in Philadelphia in 1787, four months, they argued about what a House should be, what a Senate should be, the power of the president, the Congress, the Supreme Court. And they had to deal with slavery.”

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Author:Colin Powell
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“I also think there are prices too high to pay to save the United States. Conscription is one of them. Conscription is slavery, and I don't think that any people or nation has a right to save itself at the price of slavery for anyone, no matter what name it is called. We have had the draft for twenty years now; I think this is shameful. If a country can't save itself through the volunteer service of its own free people, then I say: Let the damned thing go down the drain!”

PeopleIfsThinkingYearsCountryMatterStatesNamesNationsUnitedPayUnited StatesTwentiesNo Matter WhatSlaveryVolunteerDrainsShamefulConscriptionVolunteer Service
Author:Robert A. Heinlein
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“I say now, however, as I have all the while said, that on the territorial question - that is, the question of extending slavery under the national auspices, - I am inflexible. I am for no compromise which assists or permits the extension of the institution on soil owned by the nation.”

SaidNationsInstitutionsSlaveryCompromiseSoilPermitExtensionsExtendingTerritorialNo Compromise
Book:Abraham Lincoln: Speeches & Writings Part 2: 1859-1865: Library of America #46
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“In the first place, I insist that our fathers did not make this nation half slave and half free, or part slave and part free. I insist that they found the institution of slavery existing here. They did not make it so, but they left it so because they knew of no way to get rid of it at that time.”

WayFirstsFoundFatherLeftNationsHalfInstitutionsSlaverySlaveOur FatherBe A Slave
Book:CIVIL WAR – Complete History of the War, Documents, Memoirs & Biographies of the Lead Commanders: Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant & William T. Sherman, Biographies of Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis & Robert E. Lee, The Emancipation Proclamation, Gettysburg Address, Presidential Orders & Actions
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“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.”

HumansPersonsNationsUnderstandingLordOpinionRightsSubjectsTalentColorEqualDegreesSlaveryPropertySuperiorsHopefulEstablishmentNewtonIsaacHuman Family
Book:Thomas Jefferson: A Chronology of His Thoughts
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“The time has come for America to hear the truth about this tragic war. In international conflicts, the truth is hard to come by because most nations are deceived about themselves. Rationalizations and the incessant search for scapegoats are the psychological cataracts that blind us to our sins. But the day has passed for superficial patriotism. He who lives with untruth lives in spiritual slavery.”

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Author:Martin Luther King, Jr.
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“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.”

IfsWorldLongTwoWarStatesForceNationsVoiceUnitedUnited StatesEconomicFieldsEqualEuropeDecidedIndependenceSlaveryUnionsFinancialBlockUpsetCivil WarDivisionSectionsAbyssDominationExploitsBankersNew World OrderFederationFinancial Independence
Author:Otto von Bismarck
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“What words can express her [the white woman’s] humiliation when, at the close of this long conflict, the government which she had served so faithfully held her unworthy of a voice in its councils, while it recognized as the political superiors of all the noble women of the nation the negro men just emerged from slavery, and not only totally illiterate, but also densely ignorant of every public question.”

MenLongGovernmentPoliticalNationsVoiceWhiteConflictSlaveryNobleIgnorantSuperiorsHumiliationCouncilUnworthyIlliterate
Author:Susan B. Anthony
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“The land on which they (the Founding Fathers) formed this Union was stolen. The hands with which they built this nation were enslaved. The women who birthed the citizens of the nation are second class. This is the imperfect fabric of our nation, at times we’ve torn and stained it, and at other moments, we mend and repair it. But it’s ours, all of it. The imperialism, the genocide, the slavery, also the liberation and the hope and the deeply American belief that our best days still lie ahead of us.”

StillsMomentsHandsLyingFatherBeliefNationsClassLandCitizensBuiltSlaveryUnionsLiberationGenocideImperfectFabricTornFoundingImperialismStolen
Author:Melissa Harris-Perry
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“The American Negro must rebuild his past in order to make his future. Though it is orthodox to think of America as the one country where it is unnecessary to have a past, what is a luxury for the nation as a whole becomes a prime social necessity for the Negro. For him, a group tradition must supply compensation for persecution, and pride of race the antidote for prejudice. History must restore what slavery took away, for it is the social damage of slavery that the present generation must repair and offset.”

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Author:Arturo Alfonso Schomburg
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“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"”

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Author:Ban Ki-moon
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“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.”

NeedsHas BeensFormDiesNationsInstitutionsSlaveryAfrican AmericanControlledFoundingConstraintsCrowRebornJim CrowTailored
Book:The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
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