Slavery Quotes - Page 37

• A dogmatic belief in objective value is necessary to the very idea of a rule which is not tyranny or an obedience which is not slavery.

  C. S. Lewis

  Ideas, Belief, Obedience

  C. S. LEWIS (1947). “THE ABOLITION OF MAN”

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• Slavery, protection, and monopoly find defenders, not only in those who profit by them, but in those who suffer by them.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Suffering, Protection, Monopoly

  M. FREDERIC BASTIAT (1874). “ESSAYS ON POLITICAL ECONOMY”, p.181

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• The difference between technology and slavery is that slaves are fully aware that they are not free

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Technology, Differences, Slave

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2010). “The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms”, p.40, Random House

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• To be obsessed by the idea of freedom, for instance, is itself a form of slavery. Such people are in the chains of the hope of freedom, and are therefore able to do little else than struggle with them.

  Idries Shah

  Struggle, Ideas, People

  Idries Shah (1983). “Reflections”, p.54, Octagon Press Ltd

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• Drugs is a government game, Bilal. A way to rob us of our best black men, our army. Everyone who plays the game loses. Then they get you right back where we started, in slavery! Then they get to say "This time you did it to yourself." I won't play that game.

  Sister Souljah

  Army, Men, Games

  Sister Souljah (2004). “The Coldest Winter Ever”, p.234, Simon and Schuster

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• When everything is subject to money, then the scarcity of money makes everything scarce, including the basis of human life and happiness. Such is the life of the slave—one whose actions are compelled by threat to survival. Perhaps the deepest indication of our slavery is the monetization of time.

  Charles Eisenstein

  Survival, Scarcity, Action

  Charles Eisenstein (2011). “Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition”, p.30, North Atlantic Books

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• Holocausts do not amaze me. Rapes and child slavery do not amaze me. And Franklin, I know you feel otherwise, but Kevin does not amaze me. I am amazed when I drop a glove in the street and a teenager runs two blocks to return it. I am amazed when a checkout girl flashes me a wide smile with my change, though my own face had been a mask of expedience. Lost wallets posted to their owners, strangers who furnish meticulous directions, neighbors who water each other's houseplants - these things amaze me.

  Lionel Shriver

  Girl, Running, Children

  Lionel Shriver (2010). “We Need to Talk about Kevin”, p.250, Profile Books

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• One day the absurdity of the almost universal human belief in the slavery of other animals will be palpable. We shall then have discovered our souls and become worthier of sharing this planet with them.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Animal, Soul, One Day

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• It is a sad hardship and slavery to people who live in towns, that in their movements they know of one dimension only; they walk along the line as if they were led on a string. The transition from the line to the plane into the two dimensions, when you wander across a field or through a wood, is a splendid liberation to the slaves, like the French Revolution. But in the air you are taken into the full freedom of the three dimensions; after long ages of exile and dreams the homesick heart throws itself into the arms of space.

  Isak Dinesen

  Dream, Taken, Heart

  Isak Dinesen (1938). “Out of Africa”

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• This wise man observed that wealth is a tool of freedom. But the pursuit of wealth is the way to slavery.

  Frank Herbert

  Wise, Men, Tools

  Frank Herbert (2008). “God Emperor of Dune”, p.216, Penguin

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• We are convinced that liberty without socialism is privilege, injustice; and that socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality.

  Mikhail Bakunin

  Liberty, Brutality, Privilege

  Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bakunin (1980). “Bakunin on anarchism”

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• I have observed this in my experience of slavery, that whenever my condition was improved, instead of increasing my contentment; it only increased my desire to be free, and set me thinking of plans to gain my freedom.

  Frederick Douglass

  Inspirational, Thinking, Black History

  Frederick Douglass (2016). “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”, p.160, Frederick Douglass

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• Within each of us lies the power of our consent to health and sickness, to riches and poverty, to freedom and to slavery. It is we who control these, and not another.

  Richard Bach

  Inspirational, Motivational, Lying

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• Democratic communities have a natural taste for freedom: left to themselves they will seek it, cherish it, and view any deprivation of it with regret. But for equality their passion is ardent, insatiable, incessant, invincible: they call for equality in freedom; and if they cannot obtain that, they still call for equality in slavery.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Regret, Passion, Equality

  "Democracy in America". Book by Alexis de Tocqueville, Volume II. Book Two, Chapter I, 1840.

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• If the cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. Because the goal of America is freedom, abused and scorned tho' we may be, our destiny is tied up with America's destiny.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Freedom, Destiny, America

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• The artist must elect to fight for Freedom or for Slavery.

  Paul Robeson

  Freedom, Fighting, Artist

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• The essence of all slavery consists in taking the product of another's labor by force. It is immaterial whether this force be founded upon ownership of the slave or ownership of the money that he must get to live.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Freedom, Essence, Anarchy

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• I believe that it would be almost impossible to find anywhere in America a black man who has lived further down in the mud of human society than I have; or a black man who has been any more ignorant than I have; or a black man who has suffered more anguish during his life than I have. But it is only after the deepest darkness that the greatest joy can come; it is only after slavery and prison that the sweetest appreciation of freedom can come.

  Malcolm X

  Appreciation, Freedom, Believe

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• For stories teach us, that liberty sought out of season, in a corrupt and degenerate age, brought Rome itself to a farther slavery: for liberty hath a sharp and double edge, fit only to be handled by just and virtuous men; to bad and dissolute, it becomes a mischief unwieldy in their own hands: neither is it completely given, but by them who have the happy skill to know what is grievance and unjust to a people, and how to remove it wisely; what good laws are wanting, and how to frame them substantially, that good men may enjoy the freedom which they merit, and the bad the curb which they need.

  John Milton

  Freedom, Men, Skills

  John Milton (1851). “The Prose Works of John Milton: With a Biographical Introduction”, p.245

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• Hope of consciousness is strength.
  Hope of feelings is slavery.
  Hope of body is disease.

  G. I. Gurdjieff

  Hope, Feelings, Body

  "All and Everything: Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson". Book by George Gurdjieff, 1950.

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• Money is a new form of slavery, and distinguishable from the old simply by the fact that it is impersonal - that there is no human relation between master and slave.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Money, Freedom, Liberty

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• History has a long-range perspective. It ultimately passes stern judgment on tyrants and vindicates those who fought, suffered, were imprisoned, and died for human freedom, against political oppression and economic slavery.

  Elizabeth Gurley Flynn

  Peace, Freedom, Tyrants

  Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (1949). “Labor's Own William Z. Foster: A Communist's Fifty Years of Working-class Leadership and Struggle”, New York : New Century Publishers

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• ...secular journalists... tend to accept uncritically the oft - repeated Evangelical Protestant and Conservative Roman Catholic definitions that the Bible is anti - gay. If these people were honest, they would have to admit that the Bible is also pro - slavery and anti - women.

  John Shelby Spong

  Gay, People, Catholic

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• There was no place in the land where the seeker could not find some small budding sign of pity for the slave. No place in all the land but one - the pulpit. It yielded last; it always does. It fought a strong and stubborn fight, and then did what it always does, joined the procession - at the tail end. Slavery fell. The slavery texts in the Bible remained; the practice changed; that was all.

  Mark Twain

  Strong, Fighting, Land

  Mark Twain, Paul Baender (1973). “What Is Man? and Other Philosophical Writings”, p.74, Univ of California Press

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• Freedom had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think. But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing.

  Thomas Paine

  Truth, Freedom, Men

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

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