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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.

Random quote on Slavery

Most quoted on slavery:

This fight is against slavery; if we lose it, you will be made free.

Nathan Bedford Forrest

Slavery is in itself an arrogant denial of human rights, and by no human reason can the power to establish such a wrong be placed among the attributes of any just sovereignty.

Charles Sumner

They [the blacks] had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.

Roger B. Taney

Scripture points out this difference between believers and unbelievers; the latter, as old slaves of their incurable perversity, cannot endure the rod; but the former, like children of noble birth, profit by repentance and correction.

John Calvin

Slavery they can have anywhere. It is a weed that grows in every soil.

Edmund Burke

That men should pray and fight for their own freedom, and yet keep others in slavery, is certainly acting a very inconsistent, as well as unjust and, perhaps, impious part, but the history of mankind is filled with instances of human improprieties.

John Jay Letter to Reverend Doctor Price (1785)

I have often been utterly astonished, since I came to the north, to find persons who could speak of the singing, among slaves, as evidence of their contentment and happiness.

Frederick Douglass Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845)

The abolition of the evil is not impossible; it ought never therefore to be despaired of. Every plan should be adopted, every experiment tried, which may do something towards the ultimate object.

Thomas Jefferson Letter to Frances Wright (1825)

The Democratic Party then, as now, was in open alliance with slavery, in a conspiracy against the Constitution and the peace of the country.

George William Curtis

Racial segregation must be seen for what it is — and that is an evil system, a new form of slavery covered up with certain niceties of complexity.

Martin Luther King Jr. Keep Moving From This Mountain (1965)

The slave trade has another character; it is the very denial of every law, of all social order. Man-hunting constitutes a crime of high treason against humanity. It ought to be repressed wherever it can be reached, on land as well as by sea.

Auguste, Baron Lambermont

Resolved, That the compact which exists between the North and the South is a covenant with death and an agreement with hell; involving both parties in atrocious criminality, and should be immediately annulled.

William Lloyd Garrison

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

If there breathe on earth a slave,
Are ye truly free and brave?
If ye do not feel the chain,
When it works a brother's pain,
Are ye not base slaves indeed,
Slaves unworthy to be freed?

James Russell Lowell Stanzas on Freedom (1843)

Shall the prejudices and paralysis of slavery continue to hang upon the skirts of progress? How long will those who rejoice that slavery no longer exists cherish or tolerate the incapacities it put upon their communities?

Benjamin Harrison Inaugural address (1889)

I have a dream: that one day, right down in Georgia and Mississippi and Alabama, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to live together as brothers.

Martin Luther King Jr.

The Prophet said, "He who has a slave-girl and teaches her good manners and improves her education and then manumits and marries her, will get a double reward; and any slave who observes Allah's right and his master's right will get a double reward."

Muhammad

Yet the hour of emancipation is advancing, in the march of time. It will come.

Thomas Jefferson Letter to Edward Coles (1814)

Conquer thyself. Till thou hast done that, thou art a slave; for it is almost as well to be in subjection to another's appetite as thine own.

Robert Burton Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

I do not understand that because I do not want a negro woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. My understanding is that I can just let her alone.

Abraham Lincoln

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