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I do not see how a barbarous community and a civilized community can constitute a state. I think we must get rid of slavery or we must get rid of freedom.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Slavery

More quotes by Ralph Waldo Emerson

I wish to write such rhymes as shall not suggest a restraint, but contrariwise the wildest freedom.

Journals (1822)

The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.

The man who renounces himself, comes to himself.

Divinity College Address (1838)

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.

Poems (1847)

He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.

The Method of Nature (1841)

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We spend our lives fighting to get people very slightly more stupid than ourselves to accept truths that the great men have always known.

Doris Lessing The Golden Notebook (1962)

What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence?

Abraham Lincoln

The worker is the slave of capitalist society, the female worker is the slave of that slave.

James Connolly

The Autocrat of all the Russias will resign his crown, and proclaim his subjects free republicans sooner than will our American masters voluntarily give up their slaves.

Abraham Lincoln

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Ralph Waldo Emerson (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.