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Slavery Quotes

Browse 2495 quotes about Slavery.

Slavery Quotes

“We can constitutionally extirpate slavery at this time. But if we fail to do this, then unless we intend hereafter to violate the Constitution, we shall have a fugitive slave law in operation whenever the war is over.”

Ifs War Law Failing Constitution Slavery Slave Operations Hereafter Fugitive

Author:Jay Sekulow

“We can see quite plainly that our present civilization is built on the exploitation of animals, just as past civilisations were built on the exploitation of slaves.”

Today Past Animal Civilization Built Slavery Slave Comparison Vegan Exploitation Exploits Civilisation

Author:Donald Watson

“A fundamental condition of Being is slavery. Man is the slave of God, and God that of His vanity.”

Men Conditions Fundamentals Slavery Slave Vanity

Author:Kedar Joshi

“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

“Base is the slave that pays.”

Pay Slavery Slave

Book:King Henry V: Third Series

Source: King Henry V: Third Series

“He is sometimes slave who should be master; and sometimes master who should be slave.”

Should Sometimes Masters Slavery Slave

Author:Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs Receive our air, that moment they are free; They touch our country, and their shackles fall.”

Ifs Country Moments Fall Air England Slavery Slave Breathe Our Country That Moment Lungs Shackles Slavery Freedom

Author:William Cowper

“I would not have a slave to till my ground, To carry me, to fan me while I sleep, And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth That sinews bought and sold have ever earn'd.”

Wealth Sleep Fans Slavery Slave

Book:The task: a poem

Source: The task: a poem

“No more slave States and no more slave territory.”

States Slavery Slave Territory

Author:Salmon P. Chase

“The very mudsills of society. We call them slaves. But I will not characterize that class at the North with that term; but you have it. It is there, it is everywhere, it is eternal.”

Term Class Eternal Slavery Slave

Author:James Henry Hammond

“We are going to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery because whilst others might free the body, none but ourselves can free the mind. Mind is your only ruler, sovereign. The man who is not able to develop and use his mind is bound to be the slave of the other man who uses his mind.”

Men Mind Use Body Might Able He Man Slavery Slave Bounds Rulers Sovereign Mental Slavery

Book:The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers

Source: The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers

“Do not mistake your objection to defeat for an objection to fighting, your objection to being a slave for an objection to slavery, your objection to not being as rich as your neighbor for an objection to poverty. The cowardly, the insubordinate, and the envious share your objections.”

Fighting Mistake Poverty Rich Share Slavery Slave Defeat Neighbor Cowardly Envious Objections

Book:Nelly Sachs, Jean-Paul Sartre, George Bernard Shaw, Frans Eemil Sillanpää, René Sully-Prudhomme

Source: Nelly Sachs, Jean-Paul Sartre, George Bernard Shaw, Frans Eemil Sillanpää, René Sully-Prudhomme

“I can understand the poor and stupid voting for Marxism or one of its fashionable variants. If you've no hope of being other than a slave, you may as well opt for the most efficient form of slavery.”

Ifs Wells May I Can Form Poor Stupid Slavery Slave Voting Efficient Marxism Fashionable No Hope

Book:A Taste for Death

Source: A Taste for Death

“What the working man sells is not directly his Labor, but his Laboring Power, the temporary disposal of which he makes over to the capitalist. This is so much the case that I do not know whether by the English Law, but certainly by some Continental Laws, the maximum time is fixed for which a man is allowed to sell his laboring power. If allowed to do so for any indefinite period whatever, slavery would be immediately restored. Such a sale, if it comprised his lifetime, for example, would make him at once the lifelong slave of his employer.”

Ifs Knows Men Would Be Law Work Cases Example Periods Labor Slavery Sells Slave Lifetime Fixed Temporary Capitalist Maximum Employers Lifelong Working Man Continental English Law

Book:German socialist philosophy

Source: German socialist philosophy

“It is often asserted that as woman has always been man's slave--subject--inferior--dependent, under all forms of government and religion, slavery must be her normal condition. This might have some weight had not the vast majority of men also been enslaved for centuries to kings and popes, and orders of nobility, who, in the progress of civilization, have reached complete equality.”

Men Government Might Form Order Women Progress Conditions Subjects Century Kings Civilization Normal Weight Slavery Majority Slave Dependent Inferiors Pope Nobility Forms Of Government

Author:Susan B. Anthony

“As soon as slavery fired upon the flag it was felt, we all felt, even those who did not object to slaves, that slavery must be destroyed. We felt that it was a stain to the Union that men should be bought and sold like cattle.”

Men Should Felt Objects Slavery Unions Slave Destroyed Flags Stains Cattle

Author:Ulysses S. Grant

“The cause of the great War of the Rebellion against the United States will have to be attributed to slavery. For some years before the war began it was a trite saying among some politicians that "A state half slave and half free cannot exist." All must become slave or all free, or the state will go down. I took no part myself in any such view of the case at the time, but since the war is over, reviewing the whole question, I have come to the conclusion that the saying is quite true.”

Years War States Whole Causes United Views Half Cases United States Politician Slavery Slave Conclusion Rebellion Great War

Book:The Personal Memoirs of General U. S.

Source: The Personal Memoirs of General U. S.

“In early times, the great majority of the male sex were slaves, as well as the whole of the female. And many ages elapsed, some of them ages of high cultivation, before any thinker was bold enough to question the rightfulness, and the absolute social necessity, either of the one slavery or of the other.”

Wells Enough Whole Age Social Sex Female Absolutes Slavery Majority Slave Males Thinker Cultivation

Book:The Subjection of Women: Mill's Works

Source: The Subjection of Women: Mill's Works

“I have often sung to drown my sorrow, but seldom to express my happiness. Crying for joy, and singing for joy, were alike uncommon to me while in the jaws of slavery. The singing of a man cast away upon a desolate island might be as appropriately considered as evidence of contentment and happiness, as the singing of a slave; the songs of the one and of the other are prompted by the same emotion.”

Men Might Joy Song Emotion Cry Sorrow Singing Evidence Slavery Slave Casts Islands Contentment Uncommon Desolate Cast Away

Book:Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, an American slave, written by himself

Source: Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, an American slave, written by himself

“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.”

Men Purpose Found Interest Accepting Conditions Activity Slavery Slave Defined Engaged Plato Personal Interest

Book:Democracy And Education

Source: Democracy And Education

“From some things that I have said one may get the idea that some of the slaves did not want freedom. This is not true. I have never seen one who did not want to be free, or one who would return to slavery.”

Want May Said Ideas Return Slavery Slave

Book:The Booker T. Washington Reader

Source: The Booker T. Washington Reader

“Each of us has been endowed with the perfect power to be free. Slavery is a state of mind that fails to acknowledge the slave's own power.”

Mind Has Beens States Perfect Failing Slavery Slave Acknowledge State Of Mind

Book:Give Me Liberty: Freeing Ourselves in the Twenty-First Century

Source: Give Me Liberty: Freeing Ourselves in the Twenty-First Century

“All socialism involves slavery.... That which fundamentally distinguishes the slave is that he labors under coercion to satisfy another's desires. The relation admits of many gradations. Oppressive taxation is a form of slavery of the individual to the community as a whole. The essential question is -- How much is he compelled to labor for other benefit than his own, and how much can he labor for his own benefit?”

Whole Form Desire Individual Community Responsibility Essentials Benefits Labor Relation Slavery Slave Socialism Oppression Compelled Taxation Coercion Essential Questions

Author:Herbert Spencer

“A slave is but half a man.”

Men Half Slavery Slave

Author:Aristophanes

“Dictators during the entire history of this planet have used similar techniques. By not letting the people of their country know what conditions existed outside their boundaries, they could get the people to fight to stay in those conditions. It was the old adage: Convince a slave that he's free , and he will fight to maintain his slavery .”

People Knows Country Used Fighting Conditions Planets Slavery Slave Technique Boundaries Convince Dictator Adages

Book:The Jewels of Aptor

Source: The Jewels of Aptor

“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.”

Knows Firsts States Form Law House Nations Animal Land Concern Slavery Slave Code Empires Documents Bondage Governance Governing Fugitive

Book:The Culture of Make Believe

Source: The Culture of Make Believe

“There're two people in the world that are not likeable: a master and a slave.”

People World Two Masters Slavery Slave Be A Slave Likeable

Author:Nikki Giovanni

“You're a slave in your own country, White Man. Each year you get to keep less of the fruits of your labor; each year it gets more difficult to carry the burden the aliens have placed upon you; each year the cheap labor of aliens makes your future less secure; each year you retreat a few steps more into the world of slavery.”

“Do not quench your inspiration and your imagination; do not become the slave of your model.”

Inspiration Science Artist Imagination Design Models Slavery Slave Enthusiasm Conformity My Imagination Be A Slave Non Conformity Quench

Book:The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh

Source: The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh

“You point out that war is only a symptom of the whole horrid business of human behavior, and cannot be isolated. And that, even if we abolish war, we shall not abolish hate and greed. So might it have been argued about slave emancipation, that slavery was but one aspect of human disgustingness, and that to abolish it would not end the barbarity that causes it. But did the abolitionists therefore waste their breath? And do we waste ours now in protesting against war?”

“Communism worked honestly by officials devoid of human frailties and devoted to nothing but the good of its slaves, would have certain manifest material advantages as compared with a proletarian wage-system where millions live in semi-starvation, and many millions more in permanent dread thereof. But even if it were administered thus Communism would only produce its benefits through imposing slavery.”

“When the mass of families in a State are without property, then those who were once citizens become virtually slaves. The more the State steps in to enforce conditions of security and sufficiency; the more it regulates wages, provides compulsory insurance, doctoring, education, and in general takes over the lives of the wage-earners, for the benefit of the companies and men employing the wage-earners, the more is this condition of semi-slavery accentuated.”

Men States Wisdom Politics Company Steps Economy Conditions Security Citizens Benefits Mass Slavery Property Slave Liberalism Wages Sufficiency Compulsory Employing Doctoring

Author:Hilaire Belloc

“Modern technique has made it possible for leisure, within limits, to be not the prerogative of small privileged classes, but a right evenly distributed throughout the community. The morality of work is the morality of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery.”

World Needs Made Wisdom Politics Community Class Economy Modern Morality Limits Slavery Slave Technique Made It Liberalism Leisure Privileged Modern World Prerogative

Book:In Praise of Idleness

Source: In Praise of Idleness

“There are three ways in which a man becomes a slave. He may be born into slavery, or forced into it, or he can deliberately accept his servitude. All three forms flourish in the modern world. Men are born and forced into slavery in Russia and her satellites states. Men in the free world invite slavery when they ask the government to provide complete security, when they surrender their freedom to the "Welfare State."”

“Man preys on man; and you mourn for the idle tapestry that decorated a gothic pillar, and the dronish bell that summoned the fat priest to prayer. You mourn for the empty pageant of a name, when slavery flaps her wing, ... Why is our fancy to be appalled by terrific perspectives of a hell beyond the grave? - Hell stalks abroad; - the lash resounds on the slave's naked sides; and the sick wretch, who can no longer earn the sour bread of unremitting labour, steals to a ditch to bid the world a long good night.”

“Tony Blair a couple years ago was going around apologizing for everything. He apologized for the Irish potato famine. The Canadian government apologized for how it treated Indian school children.When is the Democratic Party going to apologize for being the biggest slave-holding-supporting institution on the planet and sticking with racism for the century after the abolition of slavery?”

“When is the Democratic Party going to apologize for being the biggest slave-holding-supporting institution on the planet and sticking with racism for the century after the abolition of slavery?”

Party Century Planets Racism Institutions Slavery Democratic Slave Apologizing Democratic Party Abolition Abolition Of Slavery

Author:Mark Steyn

“It's just like a liberal, they import slaves, they hold slaves, they fight for slavery, they go to war in a civil war to defend slavery. They then install legal discrimination against blacks for a hundred years.”

Years War Fighting Hundred Slavery Slave Discrimination Civil War Imports

Author:Ann Coulter

“People-trafficking is modern day slavery. There are more slaves today than there were at the height of the slave trade.”

People Today Modern Slavery Trade Slave Height Modern Day Trafficking Slave Trade Modern Day Slavery

Author:Ross Kemp

“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.”

Source: Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-1839

“To the Memory of those faithful brown slave-men of the plantations throughout the South, Daddy's contemporaries all, who during the war while their masters were away fighting in a cause opposed to their emancipation, brought their blankets and slept outside their mistresses' doors, thus keeping night-watch over otherwise unprotected women and children -- a faithful guardianship of which the annals of those troublous times record no instance of betrayal.”

Men Children War Night Fighting Causes Memories Watches Records Doors Masters Slavery Slave South Betrayal Instance Faithful Brown Daddy Mistress Blanket Emancipation Plantations Guardianship

Author:Ruth Stout

“The slave power dares anything, and it can be conquered only by the united masses of the people. From Congress to the people, I appeal.”

People United Mass Slavery Slave Congress Dare Appeals

Book:American slavery: repr. of an article [by N.W. Senior, entitled Slavery in the United States] on 'Uncle Tom's cabin' [by H.E.B. Stowe] and of mr. Sumner's speech of the 19th and 20th of May, 1856. With a notice of the events which followed that speech

Source: American slavery: repr. of an article [by N.W. Senior, entitled Slavery in the United States] on 'Uncle Tom's cabin' [by H.E.B. Stowe] and of mr. Sumner's speech of the 19th and 20th of May, 1856. With a notice of the events which followed that speech

“The worst form of slavery is when the slave believes he is free. This is how women under Islam feel.”

Feels Believe Form Religion Worst Slavery Slave Islam

Author:Wafa Sultan

“Good kings are slaves, and their people are free.”

People Kings Slavery Slave Good Kings

Author:Marie Leszczynska

“The sky is dark. But to understand something is to give light. Those who deny liberty to the slaves may have white skins, but their consciences are blacker than the skin of the Negro.”

Giving May Light Dark White Liberty Sky Conscience Skins Slavery Slave Deny White Skin

Author:Roman Baldorioty de Castro

“There is nothing grand or noble in having the use of a slave, in so far as he is a slave; or in issuing commands about necessary things. But it is an error to suppose that every sort of rule is despotic like that of a master over slaves, for there is as great a difference between the rule over freemen and the rule over slaves as there is between slavery by nature and freedom by nature . .”

Use Government Differences Masters Slavery Errors Slave Noble Command Freeman Necessary Things

Book:Politics

Source: Politics

“Abolishing slavery leads to slaves without masters”

Masters Slavery Slave Abolishing Slavery

Author:George Fitzhugh

“Though slavery is thought, by some, to be mild in Missouri, when compared with the cotton, sugar and rice growing states, yet no part of our slave-holding country is more noted for the barbarity of its inhabitants than St. Louis.”

Country States Growing Slavery Slave Sugar Rice Cotton Missouri Barbarity

Book:The Narrative of William Wells Brown, A Fugitive Slave

Source: The Narrative of William Wells Brown, A Fugitive Slave

“Slavery, you know, is nothing else than the unwilling labor of many. Therefore to get rid of slavery it is necessary that people should not wish to profit by the forced labor of others and should consider it a sin and a shame. But they go and abolish the external form of slavery and arrange so that one can no longer buy and sell slaves, and they imagine and assure themselves that slavery no longer exists, and do not see or wish to see that it does, because people still want and consider it good and right to exploit the labor of others.”

People Knows Want Should Doe Stills Form Wish Sin Imagine Labor Shame Slavery Sells Slave Profit Exploits Unwilling Abolish

Author:Leo Tolstoy

“Ben Skinner's brains and courage take us into the belly of the beast and expose the ugly truth of modern slavery. Instead of sensation, A Crime So Monstrous gives us desperately needed insight and analysis. This is an important book, the first deep look into America's confused relationship with human trafficking and slavery today. Skinner's balanced dissection of our government's haphazard policies will be controversial, but it can also be the foundation for a new anti-slavery agenda, one that ends the political games being played with the lives of slaves.”