Slavery Quotes - Page 2

• Slavery is what slavery's always been: About one person controlling another person using violence and then exploiting them economically, paying them nothing. That's what slavery's about

  Kevin Bales

  Violence, Persons

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• Talk about slavery! It is not the peculiar institution of the South. It exists wherever men are bought and sold, wherever a man allows himself to be made a mere thing or a tool, and surrenders his inalienable rights of reason and conscience. Indeed, this slavery is more complete than that which enslaves the body alone.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Rights, Judging

  "Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau".

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• If slavery be a sin, it is not yours. It does not rest on your action for its origin, on your consent for its existence. It is a common law right to property in the service of man; its origin was Divine decree.

  Jefferson Davis

  Men, Law, Doe

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• I pity them greatly, but I must be mum, for how could we do without sugar and rum?

  William Cowper

  Sugar, Pity, Rum

  William Cowper (1858). “Works of Cowper and Thomson”, p.122

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• My own convictions as to negro slavery are strong. It has its evils and abuses...We recognize the negro as God and God's Book and God's Laws, in nature, tell us to recognize him - our inferior, fitted expressly for servitude...You cannot transform the negro into anything one-tenth as useful or as good as what slavery enables them to be.

  Jefferson Davis

  Strong, Book, Law

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• For some slaves, the first step out of bondage is to learn to see their lives with new eyes. Their reality is a social world where they have their place and some assurance of a subsistence diet. Born into slavery, they cannot easily redefine their lives outside the frame of enslavement.

  Kevin Bales

  Eye, Reality, World

  Kevin Bales (2005). “Understanding Global Slavery: A Reader”, p.4, Univ of California Press

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• 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.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Love, Men, Justice

  Address on the Repeal of the Missouri Compromise, delivered 16 October 1854, Peoria, Illinois

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• I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever: that, considering numbers, nature, and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Country, Mean, Sleep

  Thomas Jefferson (1854). “The writings of Thomas Jefferson: being his autobiography, correspondence, reports, messages, addresses, and other writings, official and private”, p.404

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• Most people seek after what they do not possess and are enslaved by the very things they want to acquire.

  Anwar Sadat

  Motivational, Positive, Success

  Anwar Sadat (1978). “In Search of Identity: An Autobiography”, New York : Harper & Row

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• As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Wisdom, Freedom, Humor

  "Definition of Democracy," ca. 1 Aug. 1858

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• The real names of our people were destroyed during slavery. The last name of my forefathers was taken from them when they were brought to America and made slaves, and then the name of the slave master was given, which we refuse, we reject that name today and refuse it. I never acknowledge it whatsoever.

  Malcolm X

  Real, Taken, Names

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• Let the gentleman go to Revelation to learn the decree of God - let him go to the Bible. . . . I said that slavery was sanctioned in the Bible, authorized, regulated, and recognized from Genesis to Revelation. . . . Slavery existed then in the earliest ages, and among the chosen people of God; and in Revelation we are told that it shall exist till the end of time shall come. You find it in the Old and New Testaments - in the prophecies, psalms, and the epistles of Paul; you find it recognized - sanctioned everywhere.

  Jefferson Davis

  People, Religion, Gentleman

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• African slavery is the corner-stone of the industrial, social, and political fabric of the South; and whatever wars against it, wars against her very existence. Strike down the institution of African slavery and you reduce the South to depopulation and barbarism.

  Laurence M. Keitt

  War, Political, Fabric

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• Those who advocate either slavery or income taxation should be ashamed of themselves. Genuine freedom entails the abolition, not the reform, of income taxation and the IRS, just as genuine freedom entailed the abolition, not the reform, of slavery.

  Jacob G. Hornberger

  Irs, Taxation, Reform

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• Millions of our fellow human beings continue to live as contemporary slaves, victims of abominable practices like human trafficking, forced labour and sexual exploitation. Countless children are forced to become soldiers, work in sweat shops or are sold by desperate families. Women are brutalized and traded like commodities. Entire households and villages labour under debt bondage.

  Ban Ki-moon

  Children, Practice, Sweat

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• It cannot in the opinion of His Majesty's Government be classified as slavery in the extreme acceptance of the word without some risk of terminological inexactitude.

  Winston Churchill

  Acceptance, Government, Risk

  Speech in House of Commons, 22 Feb. 1906

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• Slavery is such an atrocious debasement of human nature, that its very extirpation, if not performed with solicitous care, may sometimes open a source of serious evils.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Abolition Of Slavery, Evil, Care

  Benjamin Franklin, Jared Sparks (1840). “The Works of Benjamin Franklin: Containing Several Political and Historical Tracts Not Included in Any Former Edition, and Many Letters, Official and Private, Not Hitherto Published; with Notes and a Life of the Author”, p.515

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• Have the daring to stop doing the things you really don't want to do. Can you see them? Look closely. Can you observe the many things you do because you reluctantly feel you should or must? Watch closely. Examine every action and reaction. Do you act naturally or do you act because you feel compelled? If you feel compelled, stop. Compulsion is slavery. Example: Refuse to go along with the crowd.

  Vernon Howard

  Mind, Example, Watches

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• A house divided against itself cannot stand.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Leadership, Inspirational Life, Twilight

  Speech at Republican state convention nominating him to run for U.S. senator, Springfield, Ill., 16 June 1858

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• The slavery of fear had made men afraid to think.

  Thomas Paine

  Men, Thinking, Made

  Thomas Paine, Bruce Kuklick (2000). “Paine: Political Writings”, p.162, Cambridge University Press

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• War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

  George Orwell

  Strength, Peace, Freedom

  Nineteen Eighty-Four pt. 1, ch. 1 (1949)

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• Slavery can only be abolished by raising the character of the people who compose the nation; and that can be done only by showing them a higher one.

  Maria Weston Chapman

  Character, People, Done

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• For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.

  Jonathan Swift

  Government, Definitions, Reason

  The Drapier's Letters no. 4 (1724)

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• Whatever day Makes man a slave, takes half his worth away.

  Homer

  Men, Half, Servitude

  Homer (1752). “The Odyssey of Homer: Translated from the Greek”, p.139

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• Some slaves are scoured to their work by whips, others by their restlessness and ambition.

  John Ruskin

  Ambition, Whips, Restlessness

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