Slavery Quotes
Lincoln, Frederick Douglass and James Madison have the most entries. The page is not one-sided: George Fitzhugh, a proslavery writer, is fourth, so the arguments made at the time are on the record next to the condemnations. The sourced lines worth reading in full are Madison’s letters, to Lafayette in 1821, calling slavery a sad blot on our free country, and to F. Corbin in 1820. Goethe’s Elective Affinities (1809) is here for the opposite sort of remark: none are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
Three lines are flagged. One credited to Edward R. Murrow, “We used to own our slaves; now we just rent them,” is marked misattributed. A line about freeing thousands more if they had known they were slaves, credited to Harriet Tubman, and a passage addressed “To Americans” credited to Thomas Paine are disputed.
What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence?
The worker is the slave of capitalist society, the female worker is the slave of that slave.
The Confederacy stands for slavery and the Union for freedom.
Partial freedom seems to me the most invidious form of slavery.
Where slavery exists, the republican theory becomes still more fallacious.
Slavery is, as you justly complain, a sad blot on our free country.
Where there is seeming contentment with slavery, there is certain treachery to freedom.
If slavery, barbarism and desolation are to be called peace, men can have no worse misfortune.
The leaders and scholars of Jesus’ time had first enslaved themselves to the law.
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
There is no substitute for a militant freedom. The only alternative is submission and slavery.