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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:

The Minstrel fell!—but the foeman's chain
Could not bring that proud soul under; The harp he lov'd ne'er spoke again,
For he tore its chords asunder;
And said, "No chains shall sully thee,
Thou soul of love and bravery!
Thy songs were made for the pure and free,
They shall never sound in slavery."

Thomas Moore

When the white man governs himself, that is self-government; but when he governs himself and also governs another man, that is more than self-government — that is despotism. If the negro is a man, why then my ancient faith teaches me that "all men are created equal," and that there can be no moral right in connection with one man's making a slave of another.

Abraham Lincoln

Man is free; yet we must not suppose that he is at liberty to do everything he pleases, for he becomes a slave the moment he allows his actions to be ruled by passion. The man who has sufficient power over himself to wait until his nature has recovered its even balance is the truly wise man, but such beings are seldom met with.

Giacomo Casanova Memoirs of J. Casanova de Seingalt (1894)

The Senator from South Carolina has read many books of chivalry, and believes himself a chivalrous knight, with sentiments of honor and courage. Of course he has chosen a mistress to whom he has made his vows, and who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight I mean the harlot, Slavery. For her, his tongue is always profuse in words.

Charles Sumner

Cities like London, New York, Berlin, Paris, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Detroit, or Glasgow are high spots of slavery in comparison to Albania, Bulgaria, or even Central Africa. The slavery of the watch and clock, the bourgeois, anthropocentric slavery of material prestige and successful competition (to slave in order to keep up standards), the wage slavery of the proletarian, the school slavery of the children, the conscription slavery of the adolescents, the road slavery, the factory slavery, the barrack slavery, the party slavery, the office slavery, the parlor slavery of manners and conventions — all these slaveries make political "freedom" appear a bitter joke.

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn The Menace of the Herd (1943)

I know there is a God, and that He hates injustice and slavery. I see the storm coming, and I know that His hand is in it. If He has a place and work for me — and I think He has — I believe I am ready. I am nothing, but truth is everything. I know I am right because I know that liberty is right, for Christ teaches it, and Christ is God. I have told them that a house divided against itself cannot stand, and Christ and reason say the same; and they will find it so. Douglas doesn't care whether slavery is voted up or voted down, but God cares, and humanity cares, and I care; and with God’s help I shall not fail. I may not see the end; but it will come and I shall be vindicated; and these men will find that they have not read their Bibles aright.

Abraham Lincoln

Slavery existed all over the world. The Egyptians had slaves. The Chinese had slaves. The Africans did. American Indians had slaves long before Columbus. And tragically, slavery continues today in many countries. What's uniquely Western is the abolition of slavery. And what's uniquely American is the fighting of a great war to end it.

Dinesh D'Souza America: Imagine the World Without Her (2014)

If I take the wages of everyone here, individually it means nothing, but collectively all of the earning power or wages that you earned in one week would make me wealthy. And if I could collect it for a year, I'd be rich beyond dreams. Now, when you see this, and then you stop and consider the wages that were kept back from millions of Black people, not for one year but for 310 years, you'll see how this country got so rich so fast. And what made the economy as strong as it is today. And all that slave labor that was amassed in unpaid wages, is due someone today. And you're not giving us anything when we say that it's time to collect.

Malcolm X

Let us see delineated before us the true map of man. Let us hear the dignity of his nature, and the noble rank he holds among the works of God—that consenting to slavery is a sacrilegious breach of trust, as offensive in the sight of God as it is derogatory from our own honor or interest or happiness.

John Adams Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1765)

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal." I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.

William Pitt the Younger

In a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy.

Ivan Illich Tools for Conviviality (1973)

Always there had been the complicated factor of the one institution that peculiarly set the South apart from the North, slavery...

William C. Davis Look Away!: A History of the Confederate States of America (2002)

The Republican principle, the unalterable principle, never to be lost sight of, is that slavery is wrong.

Abraham Lincoln Speech (1859)

He, who will not reason, is a bigot; he, who cannot, is a fool; and he, who dares not, is a slave.

William Drummond of Logiealmond Academical Questions (1805)

There are three fundamental states of social being: tyranny (you do what I want), slavery (I do what you want), or negotiation.

Jordan Peterson Beyond Order (2021)

Men who did not know that they were slaves do not know that they have been freed.

Milton Mayer They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955)

You constantly allege the declaration of human rights, the principles of liberty, and you yourselves believed in it so little that you constitutionally decreed slavery.

Maximilien Robespierre

To be a bandit is better than to be a slave!

Samuel R. Delany Neveryóna (1983)

Sometimes, one must become a master to avoid becoming a slave.

Octavia Butler Wild Seed (1980)

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