Slavery Quotes

• Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Freedom, 4th Of July, Patriotic

  Letter to Henry L. Pierce and Others, 6 Apr. 1859

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• Security without freedom means slavery.

  Zygmunt Bauman

  Mean, Security

  Interview with Marcelo Dimentstein, Alberto Senderey, Andy Spokoiny and Shira Shnitzer, leatid.org. February 2009.

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• If, while I hear the wild shriek of the slave mother robbed of her little ones, I do not open my mouth, am I not guilty?

  Lucy Stone

  Mother, Children, Guilt

  91 Copy quote

• You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know.

  William Wilberforce

  Inspirational, Peace, Abolition Of Slavery

  334 Copy quote

• Republicans have reached out so much to black Republicans because it's part of our tradition. Blacks have been in this nation longer than most other Americans with the possible exception of white Anglo-Saxon Protestant. The first blacks in Congress and the first black Governor were all Republicans. It was Republicans who fought the Civil War over slavery and who introduced the Civil Rights legislation over the next hundred years.

  Ann Coulter

  War, Black, Civil Rights

  Source: aalbc.com

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• ...most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution.

  Aldous Huxley

  Dream, Growing Up, Future

  Aldous Huxley, Robert S. Baker, James Sexton (2002). “Complete Essays: 1956-1963, and supplement, 1920-1948”, Ivan R. Dee Publisher

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• Where Slavery is, there Liberty cannot be; and where Liberty is, there Slavery cannot be.

  Sukarno

  Justice, Liberty, Social Justice

  34 Copy quote

• The most fatal blow to progress is slavery of the intellect. The most sacred right of humanity is the right to think, and next to the right to think is the right to express that thought without fear.

  Helen H. Gardener

  Blow, Thinking, Humanity

  13 Copy quote

• I should like to say that I left off smoking because I considered it a mean form of slavery, to be condemned for moral as well as physical reasons; but though I see the folly of smoking clearly now, I was blind to it for some months after I had smoked my last pipe. I gave up my most delightful solace, as I regarded it, for no other reason than that the lady who was willing to fling herself away on me said that I must choose between it and her.

  James M. Barrie

  Mean, Smoking, Lasts

  4 Copy quote

• There is in fact a manly and legitimate passion for equality that spurs all men to wish to be strong and esteemed. This passion tends to elevate the lesser to the rank of the greater. But one also finds in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to want to bring the strong down to their level, and which reduces men to preferring equality in servitude to inequality in freedom.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Freedom, Equality, America

  "Democracy in America". Book by Alexis de Tocqueville. Chapter III, Part I, 1835.

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• If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Presidential, Civil War, Emancipation Proclamation

  Letter to Albert G. Hodges, 4 Apr. 1864

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• I was ordered to go for flowers, that my mistress's house might be decorated for an evening party. I spent the day gathering flowers and weaving them into festoons, while the dead body of my father was lying within a mile of me. What cared my owners for that? he was merely a piece of property. Moreover, they thought he had spoiled his children, by teaching them to feel that they were human beings. This was blasphemous doctrine for a slave to teach; presumptuous in him, and dangerous to the masters.

  Harriet Ann Jacobs

  Children, Lying, Father

  Harriet Ann Jacobs (2015). “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: An Autobiographical Account of an Escaped Slave and Abolitionist”, p.18, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• Notwithstanding my grandmother's long and faithful service to her owners, not one of her children escaped the auction block. These God-breathing machines are no more, in the sight of their masters, than the cotton they plant, or the horses they tend.

  Harriet Ann Jacobs

  Horse, Children, Block

  Harriet Ann Jacobs (1861). “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl”, p.16

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• Liberty is life; slavery is death.

  Alexandre Vinet

  Liberty

  4 Copy quote

• A woman with her two children was captured on the steps of the capitol building, whither she had fled for protection, and this, too, while the stars and stripes floated over it.

  Jane Swisshelm

  Stars, Children, Two

  4 Copy quote

• Standing to America, bringing home
  black gold, black ivory, black seed.

  Robert Hayden

  Home, Ivory, America

  Robert Earl Hayden, Frederick Glaysher (1984). “Collected Prose”, p.163, University of Michigan Press

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• Slaves lose everything in their chains, even the desire of escaping from them.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Escaping, Desire, Chains

  Jean Jacques Rousseau (2015). “The Social Contract”, p.88, Jean Jacques Rousseau

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• Captivity is the greatest of all evils that can befall one.

  Miguel de Cervantes

  Evil, Captivity, Be A Slave

  23 Copy quote

• Blood is a cleansing and sanctifying thing, and the nation that regards it as the final horror has lost its manhood... there are many things more horrible than bloodshed, and slavery is one of them!

  Patrick Pearse

  Blood, Finals, Cleansing

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  Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds!

  Bob Marley

  Inspirational, Music, Song

  "Redemption Song" (song) (1980)

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

  Huey Newton

  People, Moments, Given

  Huey P Newton (2011). “The Huey P. Newton Reader”, p.137, Seven Stories Press

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• By the Law of Slavery, man, created in the image of God, is divested of the human character, and declared to be a mere chattel.

  Charles Sumner

  Character, Men, Law

  Charles Sumner (2016). “The Complete Works of Charles Sumner”, p.1444, Library of Alexandria

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• No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.

  Frederick Douglass

  Freedom, 4th Of July, Patriotic

  Speech at Civil Rights Mass Meeting,Washington, D.C., 22 Oct. 1883

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• Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.

  Plato

  Plato, Democracies Have, Political

  43 Copy quote

• Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Life, Strong, Freedom

  Speech to 140th Indiana regiment, 17 Mar. 1865

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