Slavery Quotes - Page 21

• In [India] and across the globe, hundreds and thousands of children, as young as three, as young as four, are sold into sexual slavery. But that's not the only purpose that human beings are sold for. They are sold in the name of adoption. They are sold in the name of organ trade. They are sold in the name of forced labor, camel jockeying, anything, everything.

  Sunitha Krishnan

  Children, Motivation, Inspiration

  "The fight against sex slavery". TED Talk, www.ted.com. November 2009.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Adrian Rogers told us as often as he could he took the Bible literally. He illustrated by saying he believed the world was created in six 24-hour days. And he repeated this to make an impression upon us. In private (Jerry Vines was with us), I asked Rogers what he did with the slavery passages of the New Testament. Did he take them literally? He paused and said, 'Well, I believe slavery is a much-maligned institution. If we had slavery today, we would not have this welfare mess.'

  Adrian Rogers

  Believe, Slavery Today, Vines

  157 Copy quote

• We are ending where the savages began. We have found again the lost arts of starving non-combatants, burning hovels, and leading away the vanquished into slavery. Barbarian invasions would be superfluous: we are our own Huns.

  Bertrand de Jouvenel

  Art, Invasion, Barbarians

  Bertrand de Jouvenel (1949). “On Power: Its Nature and the History of Its Growth”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Democracy is not just freedom to criticize the government or head of state, or to hold parliamentary elections. True democracy obtains only when the people - women, men, young people, children - have the ability to change the system of industrial capitalism that has oppressed them since the earliest days of slavery: a system based on class division, patriarchy, and military might, a hierarchical system that subjugates people merely because they are born poor, or female, or dark-skinned.

  Nawal El Saadawi

  Children, Military, Dark

  11 Copy quote

• What we call soul has been around a long time. It comes out of a particular culture that is African in origin, but influenced by 250 years of slavery, as well as other forms of racial oppression.

  Roy Ayers

  Years, Long, Soul

  4 Copy quote

• In every man's mind the good seeds of liberty are planted, and he who brings his fellow down so low, as to make him contented with a condition of slavery, commits the highest crime against God and man. Brethren, your oppressors aim to do this. They endeavor to make you as much like brutes as possible. When they have blinded the eyes of your mind-when they have embittered the sweet waters of the light which shines from the word of God-then, and not till then has American slavery done its perfect work.

  Henry Highland Garnet

  Sweet, Eye, Men

  Henry Highland Garnet (1865). “A Memorial Discourse”, p.47, Gale Cengage Learning

  39 Copy quote

  Show source

• Arguably the most important parallel between mass incarceration and Jim Crow is that both have served to define the meaning and significance of race in America. Indeed, a primary function of any racial caste system is to define the meaning of race in its time. Slavery defined what it meant to be black (a slave), and Jim Crow defined what it meant to be black (a second-class citizen). Today mass incarceration defines the meaning of blackness in America: black people, especially black men, are criminals. That is what it means to be black.

  Michelle Alexander

  Mean, Men, America

  "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness". Book by Michelle Alexander, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 5, 2010.

  160 Copy quote

  Show source

• Like Jim Crow (and slavery), mass incarceration operates as a tightly networked system of laws, policies, customs, and institutions that operate collectively to ensure the subordinate status of a group defined largely by race.

  Michelle Alexander

  Race, Jim Crow Laws, Groups

  Michelle Alexander (2013). “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness”, p.13, The New Press

  155 Copy quote

  Show source

• Since the nation's founding, African Americans repeatedly have been controlled through institutions such as slavery and Jim Crow, which appear to die, but then are reborn in new form, tailored to the needs and constraints of the time.

  Michelle Alexander

  African American, Crow, Needs

  Michelle Alexander (2013). “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness”, p.21, The New Press

  39 Copy quote

  Show source

• Carry out the republican principle of universal suffrage, or strike it from your banners and substitute 'Freedom and Power to one half of society, and Submission and Slavery to the other.'

  Ernestine Rose

  Principles, Half, Republican

  Ernestine Louise Rose (2008). “Mistress of herself: speeches and letters of Ernestine L. Rose, early women's rights leader”, The Feminist Press at CUNY

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is better to sacrifice everything than to live in slavery!

  Ho Chi Minh

  Sacrifice

  258 Copy quote

• For sheer drama, few accounts of slavery match Solomon Northup's tale of abduction from freedom and forcible enslavement.

  Ira Berlin

  Drama, Abduction, Tales

  7 Copy quote

• I read Norman Lock’s The Boy in His Winter with delight and amazement. Styled in the vernacular of a rapidly changing America, it stays true to the themes of Mark Twain’s original: class relations, race and slavery, childhood innocence, moral hypocrisy—and, of course, the stark beauty and unforgiving nature of America’s greatest river. I finished this absolutely elegant narrative feeling that Huck Finn has never been more alive.

  David Oshinsky

  Winter, Boys, America

  5 Copy quote

• Our country asserts for itself the glory of being the freest upon the surface of the globe... but one dark spot still dimmed its lustre. Domestic slavery existed among a people who had themselves disdained to submit to a master.

  James Forten

  Country, Dark, People

  7 Copy quote

• This is the difference between slavery and freedom. The slave must do what his superior orders him to do, but the free citizen-and this is what freedom means-is in a position to choose his own way of life.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Mean, Order, Differences

  Ludwig Von Mises (2006). “Economic Policy: Thoughts for Today and Tomorrow”, p.23, Ludwig von Mises Institute

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• A [desire] to abolish slavery prevails in North America, many of the Pennsylvanians have set their slaves at liberty, and [Virginia legislators] have petitioned the King for permission to make a law for preventing the importation of more [slaves] into that colony. This request, however, will probably not be granted, as their former laws of that kind have always been repealed.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Kings, Virginia, Law

  7 Copy quote

• Slavery ended and left its false images of black people intact

  John Henrik Clarke

  People, Black, Left

  42 Copy quote

• Slavery is not African history. Slavery interrupted African history.

  Mutabaruka

  Interrupted

  116 Copy quote

• Is slavery - owner, victim, profit, and domination - exclusive to the human race? Have blacks, Jews, women and children been the only victims of this atrocity? Have not cows been enslaved? What about pigs, chickens, turkeys, fish, sheep? If they’re not enslaved, then what are they? Free?

  Gary Yourofsky

  Children, Sheep, Race

  215 Copy quote

• Every year white people add 100 years to how long ago slavery was. I've heard educated white people say, 'slavery was 400 years ago.' No it very wasn't. It was 140 years ago...that's two 70-year-old ladies living and dying back to back. That's how recently you could buy a guy.

  Louis C. K.

  Long Ago, Years, Two

  22 Copy quote

• When we decided to take up arms, it was because the only other choice was to surrender and to submit to slavery.

  Nelson Mandela

  Choices, Arms, Surrender

  Nelson Mandela (2012). “Notes to the Future: Words of Wisdom”, p.22, Simon and Schuster

  6 Copy quote

  Show source
• 

  Accumulation of wealth at one pole is at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole

  Karl Marx

  Ignorance, Opposites, Agony

  Karl Marx (2007). “Capital: A Critique of Political Economy - The Process of Capitalist Production”, p.709, Cosimo, Inc.

  302 Copy quote

  Show source

• Animal Rights is now the greatest Social Justice issue since the abolition of slavery.

  Philip Wollen

  Animal, Rights, Abolition Of Slavery

  33 Copy quote

• Oh you Muslims! You have slept for a long time, long enough for the tyrants to take control over you. You accepted to live as slaves and submitted to tyrants. Now the time has come to revolt and destroy the shackle of slavery.

  Sheikh Abdullah

  Tyrants, Long, Over You

  43 Copy quote

• You need at this time especially to know that you are fit for something better than slavery and cannon fodder.

  Eugene V. Debs

  Needs, Fit, Cannons

  Eugene V. Debs' anti-war speech in Canton, Ohio (June 16, 1918), as quoted in The Call Magazine, www.marxists.org. 1918.

  14 Copy quote

  Show source