Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes About Slavery

• Slavery is an institution for converting men into monkeys.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Slavery, Monkeys

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Alfred R. Ferguson (1965). “Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume V: 1835-1838”, p.295, Harvard University Press

• I think we must get rid of slavery or we must get rid of freedom.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Thinking, Slavery, Slave

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2016). “Selected Writings”, p.8, Simon and Schuster

• We rail at trade, but the historian of the world will see that it was the principle of liberty; that it settled America, and destroyed feudalism, and made peace and keeps peace; that it will abolish slavery.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Peace, America, Liberty

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.4089, Delphi Classics

• Slavery it is that makes slavery; freedom, freedom. The slavery of women happened when the men were slaves of kings.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Kings, Women, Slavery

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2006). “Ralph Waldo Emerson: Selected Essays, Lectures and Poems”, p.349, Bantam Classics

• Slavery is no scholar, no improver; it does not love the whistle of the railroad; it does not love the newspaper, the mailbag, a college, a book or a preacher who has the absurd whim of saying what he thinks; it does not increase the white population; it does not improve the soil; everything goes to decay.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, College, Thinking

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2006). “Ralph Waldo Emerson: Selected Essays, Lectures and Poems”, p.325, Bantam Classics

• 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.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Memories, Real, Character

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.89, Library of America

• America is not civil, whilst Africa is barbarous.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  America, Slavery

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1844). “An Address Delivered in the Court-house in Concord, Massachusetts, on 1st August, 1844: On the Anniversary of the Emancipation of the Negroes in the British West Indies”, p.33

• It now appears that the negro race is, more than any other, susceptible of rapid civilization. The emancipation is observed, in the islands, to have wrought for the negro a benefit as sudden as when a thermometer is brought out of the shade into the sun. It has given him eyes and ears.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Eye, Islands, Race

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1844). “An Address Delivered in the Court-house in Concord, Massachusetts, on 1st August, 1844: On the Anniversary of the Emancipation of the Negroes in the British West Indies”, p.30

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

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Slavery, Dull

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1233, Delphi Classics

• 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.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Thinking, Ice Cream

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2009). “The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.754, Modern Library

• If any mention was made of homicide, madness, adultery, and intolerable tortures, we would let the church-bells ring louder, the church-organ swell its peal and drown the hideous sound. The sugar they raised was excellent: nobody tasted blood in it.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Church Bells, Blood, Sound

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald A. Bosco, Joel Myerson (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.277, Harvard University Press

• I do not see how a barbarous community and a civilized community can constitute a state. I think we must get rid of slavery or we must get rid of freedom.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Thinking, Community, Slavery

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2995, Delphi Classics

• Give the slave the least elevation of religious sentiment, and he is not slave: you are the slave: he not only in his humility feels his superiority, feels that much deplored condition of his to be a fading trifle, but he makes you feel it too. He is the master.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Religious, Humility, Giving

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.258

• We shall one day learn to supersede politics by education. What we call our root-and-branch reforms of slavery, war, gambling, intemperance, is only medicating the symptoms. We must begin higher up, namely, in education.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Education, War, Gambling

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.367

• Pretension may sit still, but cannot act. Pretension never feigned an act of real greatness. Pretension never wrote an Iliad, nordrove back Xerxes, nor christianized the world, nor abolished slavery.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Real, Greatness, World

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1851). “Essays, lectures and orations”, p.73

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