Slavery Quotes - Page 9

• Now, take the Constitution according to its plain reading, and I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it. On the other hand it will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery.

  Frederick Douglass

  Reading, Hands, Principles

  What to the Slave is the 4th of July?, delivered 4 July 1852

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• Slavery is ...an atrocious debasement of human nature.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Human Nature, Humans

  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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• The tobacco business is a conspiracy against womanhood and manhood. It owes its origin to that scoundrel Sir Walter Raleigh, who was likewise the founder of American slavery.

  John Harvey Kellogg

  Smoking, Conspiracy, Scoundrels

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• Cast your whole vote, not a piece of paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is powerless when it conforms to a majority; but is irresistable when it clogs by its whole weight. If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Giving Up, Fear, War

  Henry David Thoreau (1942). “Civil Disobedience”, p.11, Hayes Barton Press

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• The atheist realizes that there must not only be an acceptance of his right to hold his opinion, but that ultimately his is the job to turn his culture from religion, to eliminate those irrational ideas which have held the human race in intellectual slavery.

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  Atheist, Jobs, Acceptance

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• A life that stood out as a gospel of self-forgetting service. He could have added fortune to fame but caring for neither he found happiness and honor in being helpful to the world. The centre of his world was the south where he was born in slavery some 79 years ago and where he did his work as a creative scientist.

  George Washington Carver

  Caring, Science, Self

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• I is a great prison. It is your slavery and bondage to the mind. The moment you enter beyond the mind, you are - but you don`t have any notion of being an ego, of being an I. In other words: the more you think you are, the less you are; the more you experience that you are not... the more you are.

  Rajneesh

  Thinking, Ego, Mind

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• The most fundamental message of Gautama the Buddha is not God, is not soul... it is freedom: freedom absolute, total, unconditional. He does not want to give you an ideology, because every ideology creates its own slavery.

  Rajneesh

  Freedom, Giving, Soul

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• Deborah, Duchess of Devonshire recounts her decision to leave her husband after decades of struggle with his alcoholism. Several days later, he wrote to her: "The miracle occurred; I realized that in addition to all the suffering I had caused, I was not my own master. I decided this slavery must stop once and for all." And it did.

  Deborah Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire

  Husband, Struggle, Decision

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• When socialism comes into power, the Roman Church will advocate socialism with the same vigor [with which] it is now favoring feudalism and slavery.

  August Bebel

  Church, Vigor, Socialism

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• Which passages of scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is OK and that eating shellfish is an abomination? Or we could go with Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith?

  Barack Obama

  Children, Muslim Faith, Mind Blowing

  Barack Obama (2009). “Barack Obama: Speeches on the Road to the White House”

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• In our government-controlled schools we are taught that Lincoln was our greatest president because his war ended slavery and saved the Union. As usual, the other side of the story - the side that reflects poorly on the government - somehow gets lost.

  Richard J. Maybury

  War, School, Government

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• Not in government or force, not in slavery or war, but in the creative, and thereby spiritual, power of freedom, shall our inspiration be found.

  F. A. Harper

  Spiritual, War, Inspiration

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• All good men wish the entire abolition of slavery, as soon as it can take place with safety to the public, and for the lasting good of the present wretched race of slaves. The only possible step that could be taken towards it by the convention was to fix a period after which they should not be imported.

  Oliver Ellsworth

  Taken, Men, Race

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• Slavery naturally tends to destroy all sense of justice and equity. It puffs up the mind with pride: teaches youth a habit of looking down upon their fellow creatures with contempt, esteeming them as dogs or devils, and imagining themselves beings of superior dignity and importance, to whom all are indebted. This banishes the idea, and unqualifies the mind for the practice of common justice.

  David Rice

  Dog, Pride, Practice

  David Rice (1812). “A Kentucky Protest Against Slavery: Slavery Inconsistent with Justice and Good Policy, Proved by a Speech, Delivered in the Convention, Held at Danville, Kentucky”, p.7

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• From the standpoint of modern political science the slave holders were right in declaring that liberty can be given only to those who have political capacity enough to use it, and they were also right in maintaining that two greatly unequal races cannot exist side by side on terms of perfect equality.

  Charles Edward Merriam

  Race, Two, Perfect

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• In raising a people from slavery to freedom, you have called them to act on a new theatre; and it is a necessary part of your business, to teach them how to perform their parts.

  Joel Barlow

  Education, People, Theatre

  Joel Barlow (1796). “The Political Writings of Joel Barlow ... A New Edition Corrected”, p.192

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• There is no justification for the common claim that Christianity was responsible for the abolition of slavery. The Negro slave trade - a far more infamous practice than slavery in the ancient world - was initiated, carried on and defended by Christian men in Christian countries.

  Margaret E. Knight

  Christian, Country, Men

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• It is only your self-identification with your mind that makes you happy or unhappy. Rebel against your slavery to your mind, see your bonds as self-created and break the chains of attachment and revulsion. Keep in mind your goal of freedom, until it dawns on you that you are already free, that freedom is not something in the distant future to be earned with painful efforts, but perennially one's own, to be used! Liberation is not an acquisition but a matter of courage, the courage to believe that you are free already and to act on it.

  Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

  Spiritual, Wisdom, Believe

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• The first reason for people's slavery is our ignorance, and above all, our ignorance of ourselves.

  G. I. Gurdjieff

  Ignorance, People, Firsts

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• Love brings freedom. Loyalty brings slavery.

  Rajneesh

  Life, Loyalty

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• Once your awareness becomes a flame, it burns up the whole slavery that the mind has created.

  Rajneesh

  Flames, Mind, Awareness

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• Life has been reduced to a series of long periods of boredom in the office punctuated by high-octane "experiences" which you can rack up on your list of things to do before you die. That's not really living: that is slavery with the occasional circus thrown in.

  Tom Hodgkinson

  Boredom, Office, Long

  Tom Hodgkinson (2011). “Brave Old World: A Month-by-Month Guide to Husbandry, or the Fine Art of Looking After Yourself”, p.16, Penguin UK

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• From where Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party:
  WAR IS PEACE
  FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
  IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.

  George Orwell

  War, Party, Ignorance

  George Orwell, A.M. Heath (2003). “Animal Farm and 1984”, p.107, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Grant began by expressing a hope that the war would soon be over, and Lee replied by stating that he had for some time been anxious to stop the further effusion of blood, and he trusted that everything would now be done to restore harmony and conciliate the people of the South. He said the emancipation of the Negroes would be no hindrance to the restoring of relations between the two sections of the country, as it would probably not be the desire of the majority of the Southern people to restore slavery then, even if the question were left open to them.

  Horace Porter

  Country, War, Blood

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