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Slavery Quotes

Browse 2495 quotes about Slavery.

Slavery Quotes

“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

“To abolish a status, which in all ages God has sanctioned, and man has continued, would not only be robbery to an innumerable class of our fellow-subjects; but it would be extreme cruelty to the African Savages, a portion of whom it saves from massacre, or intolerable bondage in their own country, and introduces into a much happier state of life; especially now when their passage to the West-Indies and their treatment there is humanely regulated.”

Source: The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: Together with A Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides

“. . . what a burning shame it is that many of the pieces on the subject of slavery and the slave trade, contained in different school books, have been lost sight of, or been subject to the pruning knife of the slaveholding expurgatorial system!”

Has Beens Book Different School Lost Pieces Subjects Sight Shame Slavery Trade Slave Burning Knives Slave Trade Pruning

Author:Robert Purvis

“The subject is said to have the property of making dull men eloquent.”

Men Said Subjects Slavery Property Dull Eloquent

Book:Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)

Source: Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)

“Every tax, however, is to the person who pays it a badge, not of slavery but of liberty. It denotes that he is a subject to government, indeed, but that, as he has some property, he cannot himself be the property of a master.”

Persons Government Pay Liberty Subjects Masters Taxes Slavery Property Badges

Book:An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations

Source: An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations

“Sovereigns always see with pleasure a taste for the arts of amusement and superfluity, which do not result in the exportation of bullion, increase among their subjects. They very well know that, besides nourishing that littleness of mind which is proper to slavery, the increase of artificial wants only binds so many more chains upon the people.”

People Knows Want Mind Wells Art Pleasure Results Subjects Taste Increase Slavery Chains Artificial Amusement

Book:The Social Contract

Source: The Social Contract

“I would've written this story [Django] if [Barack] Obama were president or if he never existed. For one, I think it's time to tell a story that deals with this subject America has avoided for so long. Most countries have been forced to deal with the atrocities of their past that still affect them to this day. But America has been pretty slippery in the way that it has avoided looking slavery in the eye. I believe that's a problem.”

“The process of creating art allows me to learn about the subject I'm illustrating. So, if I want to learn more about plantation life and slavery, I try to find clients that will give me an opportunity to work on projects that will visualize those experiences of the enslaved African and people of color. I get to learn about my roots, and my artwork allows the reader into that world by creating images that are accessible.”

People Ifs World Want Giving Trying Art Opportunity Process Subjects Color Reader Projects Creating Roots Give Me Slavery Clients Artwork Plantations Creating Art Illustrating

Author:Jerry Pinkney

“Any unarmed people are slaves, or are subject to slavery at any given moment.”

People Moments Given Subjects Slavery Slave Unarmed

Book:The Huey P. Newton Reader

Source: The Huey P. Newton Reader

“When everything is subject to money, then the scarcity of money makes everything scarce, including the basis of human life and happiness. Such is the life of the slave—one whose actions are compelled by threat to survival. Perhaps the deepest indication of our slavery is the monetization of time.”

Humans Action Subjects Survival Bases Slavery Threat Slave Including Human Life Compelled Indication Scarce Scarcity Life And Happiness

Book:Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition

Source: Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition

“The Autocrat of all the Russias will resign his crown, and proclaim his subjects free republicans sooner than will our American masters voluntarily give up their slaves.”

Giving Subjects Masters Republican Giving Up Slavery Slave Russia Crowns American Slavery Slavery In America

Book:Speeches and Letters of Abraham Lincoln(1832-1865) (EasyRead Super Large 20pt Edition)

Source: Speeches and Letters of Abraham Lincoln(1832-1865) (EasyRead Super Large 20pt Edition)

“I do not wish to be misunderstood upon this subject of slavery in this country. I suppose it may long exist, and perhaps the best way for it to come to an end peaceably is for it to exist for a length of time. But I say that the spread and strengthening and perpetuation of it is an entirely different proposition. There we should in every way resist it as a wrong, treating it as a wrong, with the fixed idea that it must and will come to an end.”

Way Should May Long Ideas Different Ends Country Wish Subjects Slavery Spread Best Way Fixed Length Propositions Misunderstood Strengthening

Book:Abraham Lincoln: Speeches & Writings Part 2: 1859-1865: Library of America #46

Source: Abraham Lincoln: Speeches & Writings Part 2: 1859-1865: Library of America #46

“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.”

Source: Thomas Jefferson: A Chronology of His Thoughts

“The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery, for slavery consists in being subject to the will of another, and he that has not a vote in the election of representatives is in this case.”

Men Government Pain Cases Rights Subjects Vote Election Slavery Primaries Voting Protected Representatives

Book:THOMAS PAINE Ultimate Collection: Political Works, Philosophical Writings, Speeches, Letters & Biography (Including Common Sense, The Rights of Man & The Age of Reason): The American Crisis, The Constitution of 1795, Declaration of Rights, Agrarian Justice, The Republican Proclamation, Anti-Monarchal Essay, Letters to Thomas Jefferson and George Washington…

Source: THOMAS PAINE Ultimate Collection: Political Works, Philosophical Writings, Speeches, Letters & Biography (Including Common Sense, The Rights of Man & The Age of Reason): The American Crisis, The Constitution of 1795, Declaration of Rights, Agrarian Justice, The Republican Proclamation, Anti-Monarchal Essay, Letters to Thomas Jefferson and George Washington…

“We have inherited a fear of memories of slavery. It is as if to remember and acknowledge slavery would amount to our being consumed by it. As a matter of fact, in the popular black imagination, it is easier for us to construct ourselves as children of Africa, as the sons and daughters of kings and queens, and thereby ignore the Middle Passage and centuries of enforced servitude in the Americas. Although some of us might indeed be the descendants of African royalty, most of us are probably descendants of their subjects, the daughters and sons of African peasants or workers.”

“To emancipate woman is to refuse to confine her to the relations she bears to man, not to deny them to her; let her have her independent existence and she will continue nonetheless to exist for him also: mutually recognising each other as subject, each will yet remain for the other an other...when we abolish the slavery of half of humanity, together with the whole system of hypocrisy that it implies, then the 'division' of humanity will reveal its genuine significance and the human couple will find its true form.”

Men Humans Whole Together Form Humanity Existence Half Subjects Bears Couple Relation Independent Slavery Refuse Deny Genuine Hypocrisy Significance Division Abolish

Author:Simone de Beauvoir

“I don't think the people of the slave states will ever consider the subject of slavery in its true light till some other argument is resorted to other than moral persuasion.”

People Thinking States Light Moral Subjects Argument Slavery Slave Persuasion

Book:The Life and Letters of John Brown, Liberator of Kansas and Martyr of Virginia

Source: The Life and Letters of John Brown, Liberator of Kansas and Martyr of Virginia

“Mr. President, the cause of this great discontent in the country, the cause of the evils which we now suffer and which we now fear, originates chiefly from questions growing out of the respective rights of the different States and the unfortunate subject of slavery.”

Different War Country States Suffering Evil Causes President Growing Rights Subjects Slavery Civil War Unfortunate Discontent

Author:John J. Crittenden

“I say, then, that viewed from that standpoint, there is but one single subject of complaint which Virginia has to make against the government under which we live; a complaint made by the whole South, and that is on the subject of African slavery.”

Made War Whole Government Subjects Slavery South Civil War Complaints Virginia Standpoint

Author:John Brown Baldwin

“The moment this House undertakes to legislate upon this subject slavery, it dissolves the Union. Should it be my fortune to have a seat upon this floor, I will abandon it the instant the first decisive step is taken looking towards legislation of this subject. I will go home to preach, and if I can, practice, disunion, and civil war, if needs be. A revolution must ensue, and this republic sink in blood.”

Source: Remarks of Mr. Hammond, of South Carolina, on the Question of Receiving Petitions for the Abolition of Slavery in the District of Columbia

“Any unarmed people are slaves, or are subject to slavery at any given moment. If the guns are taken out of the hands of the people and only the pigs have guns, then it's off to the concentration camps, the gas chambers, or whatever the fascists in America come up with. One of the democratic rights of the United States, the Second Amendment to the Constitution, gives the people the right to bear arms. However, there is a greater right; the right of human dignity that gives all men the right to defend themselves.”