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Slavery Quotes

Browse 2495 quotes about Slavery.

Slavery Quotes

“I think of the old slavery, and of the way The Economy has now improved upon it. The new slavery has improved upon the old by giving the new slaves the illusion that they are free. The Economy does not take people's freedom by force, which would be against its principles, for it is very humane. It buys their freedom, pays for it, and then persuades its money back again with shoddy goods and the promise of freedom. "Buy a car," it says, "and be free. Buy a boat and be free." Is this not the raw material of bad dreams? Or is it maybe the very nightmare itself?”

Source: Jayber Crow: A Novel

“The conflict between the principle of liberty and the fact of slavery is coming gradually to an issue. Slavery has now the power, and falls into convulsions at the approach of freedom. That the fall of slavery is predetermined in the counsels of Omnipotence I cannot doubt; it is a part of the great moral improvement in the condition of man, attested by all the records of history. But the conflict will be terrible, and the progress of improvement perhaps retrograde before its final progress to consummation.”

Source: Memoirs of John Quincy Adams: Comprising Portions of His Diary from 1795 to 1848

“Slavery is the great and foul stain upon the North American Union. A dissolution, at least temporary, of the Union, as now constituted, would now be certainly necessary. The Union might then be reorganized on the fundamental principle of emancipation.”

Might Principles Fundamentals Slavery Unions Temporary Foul Stains Emancipation Dissolution Fundamental Principles

Author:John Quincy Adams

“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.”

Source: The collected works of Lysander Spooner

“There must be no compromise with slavery - none whatever. Nothing is gained, everything is lost, by subordinating principle to expedience.”

Wisdom Politics Lost Principles Economy Slavery Compromise Liberalism No Compromise Expedience

Book:Selections from the writings and speeches of William Lloyd Garrison: With an appendix ...

Source: Selections from the writings and speeches of William Lloyd Garrison: With an appendix ...

“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.”

Literature Interest Principles Influence Letters Slavery Profession Curse Southern Honorable Clinging Libel Christendom Republicanism Travesty

Book:Ante-bellum writings of George Fitzhugh and Hinton Rowan Helper on slavery

Source: Ante-bellum writings of George Fitzhugh and Hinton Rowan Helper on slavery

“And there is no difference, in principle - but only in degree - between political and chattel slavery. The former, no less than the latter, denies a man's ownership of himself and the products of his labor; and asserts that other men may own him, and dispose of him and his property, for their uses, and at their pleasure.”

Men May Use Political Differences Pleasure Principles Products Degrees Labor Slavery Property Deny Former Latter Ownership

Book:Individualist anarchist pamphlets

Source: Individualist anarchist pamphlets

“For all our penny-wisdom, for all our soul-destroying slavery to habit, it is not to be doubted that all men have sublime thoughts; that all men value the few real hours of life; they love to be heard; they love to be caught up into the vision of principles. We mark with light in the memory the few interviews we have had, in the dreary years of routine and of sin, with souls that made our souls wiser; that spoke what we thought; that told us what we knew; that gave us leave to be what we only were.”

Source: Essays and Lectures

“Civil rights, as we may remember, are reducible to three primary heads; the right of personal security; the right of personal liberty; and the right of private property. In a state of slavery, the two last are wholly abolished, the person of the slave being at the absolute disposal of his master; and property, what he is incapable, in that state, either of acquiring, or holding, in his own use. Hence, it will appear how perfectly irreconcilable a state of slavery is to the principles of a democracy, which form the basis and foundation of our government.”

Source: A Dissertation on Slavery: With a Proposal for the Gradual Abolition of it in the State of Virginia

“A consistent anarchist must oppose private ownership of the means of production, and the wage-slavery which is a component of this system, as incompatible with the principle that labor must be freely undertaken and under the control of the producer.”

Mean Principles Labor Slavery Productions Producers Consistent Ownership Components Anarchist

Book:The Essential Chomsky

Source: The Essential Chomsky

“The Fourteenth Amendment, after the civil war, in principle brought former slaves into the category of persons, theoretically. But if you actually look, almost all the cases brought up for personal rights under the Fourteenth Amendment were by corporations. Freed slaves couldn't do it. In fact they were pretty much driven back into something like slavery by a north - south compact, that allowed former slave states to criminalize black life, which made a criminal force that was basically used as a forced labor force, up until the 1930s.”

“When you think about the abolition of slavery for example, for the ruling class with the rich white people owning plantations and states, and things like that, slavery was to their benefit. To oppose it didn't make any sense at all on a rational basis. But on a rights basis, on a principle basis, it made obvious, overwhelming sense.”

People Thinking Made States White Class Principles Rich Rights Example Benefits Bases Slavery Obvious Rational Overwhelming Ruling Abolition Plantations Abolition Of Slavery

Author:Edward Snowden

“Even the Declaration of Independence starts out all men are created equal, so I see my advocacy as part of an effort to make the equality principle everything the founders would have wanted it to be if they weren't held back by the society in which they lived and particularly the shame of slavery.”

Ifs Men Wanted Effort Principles Equal Shame Independence Slavery Founders Declaration Declaration Of Independence Advocacy

Author:Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“I am not a 'democrat' only because 'humility' and equality are spiritual principles corrupted by the attempt to mechanize and formalize them, with the result that we get not universal smallness and humility, but universal greatness and pride, till some Orc gets hold of a ring of power--and then we get and are getting slavery.”

Spiritual Results Principles Greatness Humility Pride Universal Slavery Democrat Rings Smallness Orcs

Book:The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien

Source: The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien

“You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress in humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step toward the diminution of war, every step toward better treatment of the colored races, or every mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world. I say quite deliberately that the christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principle enemy of moral progress in the world.”

Source: The basic writings of Bertrand Russell, 1903-1959

“Slavery is founded on the selfishness of man's nature - opposition to it on his love of justice. These principles are in eternal antagonism; and when brought into collision so fiercely as slavery extension brings them, shocks and throes and convulsions must ceaselessly follow.”

Men Love Justice Principles Eternal Slavery Slave Selfishness Shock Opposition Extensions His Love Collision Be A Slave Antagonism

Author:Abraham Lincoln

“The Emancipation Proclamation...can remind us in 2013 of all the mistakes we never want to commit again but it can also motivate us to fulfill to an ever greater degree the definitive freedom-sustaining and life-enhancing principles of democracy in living action.”

Want Life Action Freedom Mistake Principles Democracy Greater Degrees Slavery Commit Emancipation Sustaining Proclamation Emancipation Proclamation

Author:Aberjhani

“Now what is Judge Douglas Popular Sovereignty? It is, as a principle, no other than that, if one man chooses to make a slave of another man, neither that other man nor anybody else has a right to object.”

Ifs Men Principles Objects Judging Slavery Slave One Man Sovereignty Another Man Popular Sovereignty

Book:Abraham Lincoln, a Documentary Portrait Through His Speeches and Writings

Source: Abraham Lincoln, a Documentary Portrait Through His Speeches and Writings

“What is the basic, the essential, the crucial principle that differentiates freedom from slavery? It is the principle of voluntary action versus physical coercion or compulsion.”

Action Liberty Principles Economic Essentials Slavery Libertarian Crucial Libertarianism Versus Compulsion Coercion Differentiate

Book:Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

Source: Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

“What I do say is, that no man is good enough to govern another man, without that other's consent. I say this is the leading principle - the sheet anchor of American republicanism.”

Men Enough Principles Slavery Good Enough Consent Sheets Another Man Anchors Be A Slave Republicanism American Slavery

Author:Abraham Lincoln

“Is it not amazing that at a time when the rights of humanity are defined and understood with precision, in a country, above all others, fond of liberty-that in such an age and in such a country we find men professing a religion the most humane, mild, gentle and generous, adopting a principle as repugnant to humanity as it is inconsistent with the Bible, and destructive to liberty?”

Men Country Age Humanity Liberty Principles Rights Understood Slavery Defined Gentle Generous Destructive Humane Find Me Precision Inconsistent Adopting

Book:Patrick Henry in his speeches and writings and in the words of his contemporaries

Source: Patrick Henry in his speeches and writings and in the words of his contemporaries

“The inconsistency of the institution of domestic slavery with the principles of the Declaration of Independence was seen and lamented . . . no insincerity or hypocrisy can be fairly laid to their charge. Never from their lips was heard one syllable of attempt to justify the institution of slavery. They universally considered it as a reproach fastened upon them by the unnatural step-mother country and they saw that before the principles of the Declaration of Independence slavery, in common with every other mode of oppression, was destined sooner or later to be banished from the earth.”

“Now, take the Constitution according to its plain reading, and I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it. On the other hand it will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery.”

Hands Purpose Reading Found Existence Principles Constitution Slavery Hostile Presentation Clauses Pro Slavery

Author:Frederick Douglass

“Christianity, by introducing into Europe the truest principles of humanity, universal benevolence, and brotherly love, had happily abolished civil slavery. Let us who profess the same religion practice its precepts... by agreeing to this duty.”

Humanity Christianity Principles Practice Duty Europe Universal Slavery Introducing Benevolence Truest Brotherly Brotherly Love

Book:Memoir of the Life of Richard H. Lee, and His Correspondence with the Most Distinguished Men in America and Europe

Source: Memoir of the Life of Richard H. Lee, and His Correspondence with the Most Distinguished Men in America and Europe

“I have ever been opposed to banks, - opposed to internal improvements by the general government, - opposed to distribution of public lands among the states, - opposed to taking the power from the hands of the people, - opposed to special monopolies, - opposed to a protective tariff, - opposed to a latitudinal construction of the constitution, - opposed to slavery agitation and disunion. This is my democracy. Point to a single act of my public career not in keeping with these principles.”

“If We allow Slaves, we act against the very Principles by which we associated together, which was to relieve the distressed.”

Ifs Together Principles Slavery Slave Governors

Book:General Oglethorpe's Georgia: 1738-43

Source: General Oglethorpe's Georgia: 1738-43

“Not only do I pray for it, on the score of human dignity, but I can clearly forsee that nothing but the rooting out of slavery can perpetuate the existence of our union, by consolidating it in a common bond of principle.”

Humans I Can Common Existence Principles Praying Dignity Slavery Unions Score I Pray Human Dignity Slavery In America

Author:George Washington

“Carry out the republican principle of universal suffrage, or strike it from your banners and substitute 'Freedom and Power to one half of society, and Submission and Slavery to the other.'”

Half Principles Republican Universal Slavery Strikes Substitutes Submission Banner Suffrage One Half Universal Suffrage

Book:Mistress of herself: speeches and letters of Ernestine L. Rose, early women's rights leader

Source: Mistress of herself: speeches and letters of Ernestine L. Rose, early women's rights leader

“I could not comprehend the justice of that law, or that religion, which upholds or recognizes the principle of slavery.”

Law Justice Principles Slavery

Book:Slave Narratives Compilation: Twelve Years A Slave, My Bondage and My Freedom, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Northern Slave

Source: Slave Narratives Compilation: Twelve Years A Slave, My Bondage and My Freedom, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Northern Slave

“We inherited these principles and these freedoms and we here highly resolve that we shall pass them on, as we will pass on an undivided Republic purged of racism and slavery, to our descendants. The popgun discharges of a few pathetic sectarians and crackpot revisionists are negligible, and will be drowned by the mounting chorus that demands: 'Mr Jefferson! BUILD UP THAT WALL'.”

Principles Wall Demand Racism Slavery Atheist Resolve Republic Pathetic Chorus Descendants Discharge Crackpots

Author:Christopher Hitchens

“And I take this opportunity to declare, that... I will to my dying day oppose with all the powers and faculties God has given me, all such instruments of slavery on the one hand, and villainy on the other, as this writ of assistance is. It appears to me the worst instrument of arbitrary power, - the most destructive of English liberty and the fundamental principles of law, that ever was found in an English law book.”

“The conflict between the principle of liberty and the fact of slavery is coming gradually to an issue. Slavery has now the power, and falls into convulsions at the approach of freedom.”

Facts Fall Liberty Principles Issues Conflict Approach Slavery

Book:John Quincy Adams: Diaries 1821-1848

Source: John Quincy Adams: Diaries 1821-1848

“For black politicians, civil rights organizations and white liberals to support the racist practices of the University of Michigan amounts to no less than a gross betrayal of the civil rights principles of our historic struggle from slavery to the final guarantee of constitutional rights to all Americans. Indeed, it was practices like those of the University of Michigan, but against blacks, that were the focal point of much of the civil rights movement.”

“Employment is the biggest form of slavery”

People Love Life God Purpose Time Values Passion Work Money Principles Destiny Calling Worship Slavery Employment Service Opportunities Jobless Kingdom Serving God Joblessness

Author:Sunday Adelaja