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.
Popular suffrage is in itself no guarantee of freedom. People can vote themselves into slavery.
“This was the face of slavery. To have nothing, and still have something more to lose.”
The morality of work is the morality of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery.
Abolition of work-free and effortless income. Breaking of interest-slavery.
Frederick Douglass would rejoice, for he fought not only slavery but the oppression of women.