Slavery Quotes - Page 32

• This is what the government is, has always been, the creator and defender of privilege; the organization of oppression and revenge. To hope that it can ever become anything else is the vainest of delusions. They tell you that Anarchy, the dream of social order without government, is a wild fancy. The wildest dream that ever entered the heart of man is the dream that mankind can ever help itself through an appeal to law, or to come to any order that will not result in slavery wherein there is any excuse for government.

  Voltairine de Cleyre

  Dream, Revenge, Heart

  Eleventh of November 1887: Haymarket Memorial Speech by Voltairine de Cleyre, delivered in Chicago, contentdm.library.uvic.ca. 1901.

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• Slavery tolerates no freedom of the press, no freedom of speech, no freedom of opinion.

  Hinton Rowan Helper

  Independent Judiciary, Freedom Of Speech, Opinion

  Hinton Rowan Helper (1860). “The impending crisis of the South: how to meet it”, p.436

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• Civilization, stretching up to recognize that every child is a portion of State wealth, may presently make some movement to recognize maternity as a business or office needing time and strength, not as a mere passing detail thrown in among mountains of other slavery.

  Miles Franklin

  Children, Civilization, Office

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• To the Memory of those faithful brown slave-men of the plantations throughout the South, Daddy's contemporaries all, who during the war while their masters were away fighting in a cause opposed to their emancipation, brought their blankets and slept outside their mistresses' doors, thus keeping night-watch over otherwise unprotected women and children -- a faithful guardianship of which the annals of those troublous times record no instance of betrayal.

  Ruth Stout

  Children, Memories, Betrayal

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• The slave power dares anything, and it can be conquered only by the united masses of the people. From Congress to the people, I appeal.

  Charles Sumner

  People, Congress, Mass

  Nassau William Senior, Harriet Elizabeth Beecher Stowe, Charles Sumner (1856). “American slavery: repr. of an article [by N.W. Senior, entitled Slavery in the United States] on 'Uncle Tom's cabin' [by H.E.B. Stowe] and of mr. Sumner's speech of the 19th and 20th of May, 1856. With a notice of the events which followed that speech”, p.143

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• The lens freezes time and space in what may be an optical slavery or, contrarily, the crystallization of meaning. The limits of the lens' vision are esthetically often a virtue.

  Berenice Abbott

  Photography, Space, Vision

  Berenice Abbott (1944). “A guide to better photography”

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• However you disguise slavery, it is slavery still. Its chains, though wreathed with roses, not only fasten on the body but rivet on the mind.

  Jane Porter

  Rose, Mind, Body

  Jane Porter (1809). “Thaddeus of Warsaw ...”, p.70

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• Ah! the curse of slavery, as the common phrase goes, has fallen not merely on the black but perhaps at this moment still more upon the white, because it has warped his sense of truth and has degraded his moral nature. The position and the treatment of the blacks, however, really improve from year to year; while the whites do not seem to advance in enlightenment.

  Fredrika Bremer

  Years, White, Black

  Fredrika Bremer, Adolph Benson, Carrie Catt (2007). “America of the Fifties: Letters of Fredrika Bremer”, p.102, Applewood Books

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• Much as being active in the antislavery movement of the last century involved more than not engaging in slavery oneself, so joining in an antiviolence movement has to go beyond opting for nonviolence in one's personal life. It calls for engaging in imaginative and forceful practices of nonviolent resistance to violence, including taking a stand toward entertainment violence.

  Sissela Bok

  Joining In, Practice, Movement

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• The Reverend Douglas Wilson may not be a professional historian, as his detractors say, but he has a strong grasp of the essentials of the history of slavery and its relation to Christian doctrine. Indeed, sad to say, his grasp is a great deal stronger than that of most professors of American history, whose distortions and trivializations disgrace our college classrooms. And the Reverend Mr. Wilson is a fighter, especially effective in defense of Christianity against those who try to turn Jesus' way of salvation into pseudo-moralistic drivel.

  Eugene Genovese

  Christian, Strong, Jesus

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• Although all men are born free, slavery has been the general lot of the human race. Ignorant--they have been cheated; asleep--they have been surprised; divided--the yoke has been forced upon them. But what is the lesson...? The people ought to be enlightened, to be awakened, to be united, that after establishing a government they should watch over it.... It is universally admitted that a well-instructed people alone can be permanently free.

  James Madison

  Men, Race, People

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• I utterly reject the view that the Third World is doomed to poverty and starvation. Not only is this wrong, I think this attitude verges on the immoral, like thinking that slavery is an unalterable facet of the human condition so why bother doing anything about it?

  Alex Tabarrok

  Attitude, Thinking, Views

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• A man who feels that his religion is a slavery has not begun to comprehend the real nature of religion.

  J. G. Holland

  Real, Men, Religion

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• Notwithstanding all the wrongs that slavery heaped upon me, I can bless it for one thing-youth's important lesson of self-reliance.

  Elizabeth Keckley

  Self, Important, Lessons

  Elizabeth Keckley (2016). “Slave Narrative Six Pack 2”, p.281, Enhanced Media Publishing

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• Poor dusky children of slavery, men and women of my own race-the transition from slavery to freedom was too sudden for you! The bright dreams were too rudely dispelled; you were not prepared for the new life that opened before you, and the great masses of the North learned to look upon your helplessness with indifference-learned to speak of you as an idle, dependent race. Reason should have prompted kinder thoughts. Charity is ever kind.

  Elizabeth Keckley

  Dream, Children, Men

  Elizabeth Keckley (2016). “Behind the Scenes: Or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House”, p.52, Enhanced Media Publishing

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• This is what I hold against slavery. May come a time when I forgive - cause I don't think I'm set up to forget - the beatings, the selling, the killings, but I don't think I ever forgive the ignorance they kept us in.

  Sherley Anne Williams

  Ignorance, Thinking, Forgiving

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• It has not been without bitter resistance by the clergy that woman's property and educational rights have advanced. Woman's anti-slavery work, her temperance work, her demand for personal rights, for political equality, for religious freedom and every step of kindred character has met with opposition from the church as a body and from the clergy as exponents of its views.

  Matilda Joslyn Gage

  Religious, Educational, Character

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• Captive people have a need for song.

  Michelle Cliff

  Song, People, Singing

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• This world is filled with many vulgar and dishonorable things that will claw and tear at your Christian purity if you allow them to. Don't let them! Seek instead the things of God. He will purify you and free you from your slavery to profane and inconsequential things.

  Patrick Madrid

  Christian, Tears, World

  Patrick Madrid (2012). “A Year with the Bible: Scriptural Wisdom for Daily Living”, p.27, TAN Books

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• Copying is slavery. The letter must never be followed, only the spirit is to be grasped. Higher affirmations live in the spirit. And where is the spirit? Seek it in your everyday experience, and therein lies abundance of proof for all you need.

  D.T. Suzuki

  Lying, Everyday, Experience

  D.T. Suzuki (2007). “An Introduction to Zen Buddhism”, p.55, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• I learned a history not then written in books but one passed from generation to generation on the steps of moonlit porches and beside dying fires in one-room houses, a history of great-grandparents and of slavery and of the days following slavery; of those who lived still not free, yet who would not let their spirits be enslaved.

  Mildred D. Taylor

  Book, Fire, Grandparent

  Mildred D. Taylor (2004). “Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (Puffin Modern Classics)”, p.10, Penguin

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• The worst form of slavery is when the slave believes he is free. This is how women under Islam feel.

  Wafa Sultan

  Believe, Religion, Islam

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• Good kings are slaves, and their people are free.

  Marie Leszczynska

  Kings, People, Good Kings

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• The poor South. Already guilty of slavery, it became guilty of cigarettes.

  Helen Bevington

  Guilty, Poor, Cigarette

  Helen Smith Bevington (1971). “The house was quiet and the world was calm”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

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• I would rather die upon yonder gallows, than live in slavery.

  Samuel Sharpe

  Gallows, Dies

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