quotations about slavery
Slavery, in all its forms, in all its degrees, is a violation of Divine law, and a degradation of human nature.
JACQUES-PIERRE BRISSOT DE WARVILLE
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New Travels in the United States of America, Performed in 1788
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
GEORGE ORWELL
Nineteen Eighty-Four
There must doubtless be an unhappy influence on the manners of our people produced by the existence of slavery among us. The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
Notes on the State of Virginia, 1782
I thank God, I shall never again visit a slave-country. To this day, if I hear a distant scream, it recalls with painful vividness my feelings, when passing a house near Pernambuco, I heard the most pitiable moans, and could not but suspect that some poor slave was being tortured, yet knew that I was as powerless as a child even to remonstrate. I suspected that these moans were from a tortured slave, for I was told that this was the case in another instance. Near Rio de Janeiro I lived opposite to an old lady, who kept screws to crush the fingers of her female slaves. I have staid in a house where a young household mulatto, daily and hourly, was reviled, beaten, and persecuted enough to break the spirit of the lowest animal. I have seen a little boy, six or seven years old, struck thrice with a horse-whip (before I could interfere) on his naked head, for having handed me a glass of water not quite clean; I saw his father tremble at a mere glance from his master's eye. ... And these deeds are done and palliated by men, who profess to love their neighbours as themselves, who believe in God, and pray that his Will be done on earth! It makes one's blood boil, yet heart tremble, to think that we Englishmen and our American descendants, with their boastful cry of liberty, have been and are so guilty.
CHARLES DARWIN
The Voyage of the Beagle
It is much to be wished that slavery may be abolished. The honour of the States, as well as justice and humanity, in my opinion, loudly call upon them to emancipate these unhappy people. To contend for our own liberty, and to deny that blessing to others, involves an inconsistency not to be excused.
JOHN JAY
letter to R. Lushington, March 15, 1786
They keep on talking, they're oh so proud
They keep us walking, they scream so loud
They own the venue, they own he crowd
Hey, yeah, slavery
RICHIE HAVENS
"Fates"
Willingly no one chooses the yoke of slavery.
AESCHYLUS
Agamemnon
Slavery brutalizes man; it makes a brute not merely of the slave, but of the slave-holder.
C. L. REMOND
attributed, Day's Collacon
Of course, most white Southerners of the period were neither villains nor heroes. The majority did not enslave other people, but neither did they advocate the end of slavery or even the softening of slavery. They did not work to halt the worst practices of the era -- the sale of children away from parents, the separation of husbands and wives -- nor did they seek to end the concubinage of enslaved girls and women. Many did not own slaves simply because they couldn't afford them.
LISA RICHARDSON
"A daughter of the Confederacy corrects history", Gulf Times, August 29, 2017
Better freedom with a crust, than slavery with every luxury.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Slavery is bad for the slave, but far worse for the master, as sapping his character and making impossible that moral vigour of the individual on which is based the collective vigour of the nation.
LEONARD HUXLEY
"Life of Professor Huxley", Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley
People don't buy products--they buy people. It's called slavery. I mean networking. It's called networking.
JAROD KINTZ
This Book Is Not For Sale
X is not my real name, but if you study history you'll find why no black man in the western hemisphere knows his real name. Some of his ancestors kidnapped our ancestors from Africa, and took us into the western hemisphere and sold us there. And our names were stripped from us and so today we don't know who we really are. I am one of those who admit it and so I just put X up there to keep from wearing his name.
MALCOLM X
Oxford Union Debate, December 3, 1964
When you believe, or are led to believe, you are unable to act upon the greatest desires of the soul, the result is mental and spiritual enslavement.
IYANLA VANZANT
Acts of Faith
Look back, to slavery, to suffrage, to integration and one thing is clear. Fashions in bigotry come and go. The right thing lasts.
ANNA QUINDLEN
New York Times, January 31, 1993
It is a dire calamity to have a slave; it is an expiable curse to be one.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
Selections from the Writings of Walter Savage Landor
Imprisoned with the pharaohs, i notice no race predominates, but slavery's still the norm, sarcophagus, sarcophagus, sarcophagus,flesh-consumers of the great house
RUDIMENTARY PENI
"Sarcophagus"
Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still, Slavery! still thou art a bitter draught; and though thousands in all ages have been made to drink of thee, thou art no less bitter on that account.
LAURENCE STERNE
A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy
In ancient times, as to-day in Asia and Africa, slaves were simply called slaves. In the Middle Ages, they took the name of "serfs", to-day they are called "wage-earners".
MIKHAIL BAKUNIN
Marxism, Freedom and the State
The man born and bred a slave, even if freed, never loses wholly the feeling or manner of a slave.
MARY CLEMMER AMES
Outlines of Men, Women, and Things