SLAVERY QUOTES

quotations about slavery

Slavery quote

Nature made no man a slave.

ALCIDAMAS

attributed, Day's Collacon


Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

speech, March 17, 1865

Tags: Abraham Lincoln


Anytime anyone is enslaved, or in any way deprived of his liberty, if that person is a human being, as far as I am concerned he is justified to resort to whatever methods necessary to bring about his liberty again.

MALCOLM X

Oxford Union Debate, December 3, 1964

Tags: Malcolm X


If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

letter to A. G. Hodges, April 4, 1864

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Slavery is theft -- theft of a life, theft of work, theft of any property or produce, theft even of the children a slave might have borne.

KEVIN BALES

Understanding Global Slavery


Not only does the Christian religion, but nature herself, cry out against the state of slavery.

POPE LEO X

attributed, Day's Collacon


As long as the mind is enslaved, the body can never be free. Psychological freedom, a firm sense of self-esteem, is the most powerful weapon against the long night of physical slavery.

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

speech, August 16, 1967

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Slaves are generally expected to sing as well as to work.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS

My Bondage and My Freedom


Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature -- opposition to it, in his love of justice.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

speech at Peoria, Illinois, in reply to Senator Douglas, October 16, 1854


When we acknowledge the kingdom of the self, we will no longer accept slavery either for ourselves or for others, no matter how it is disguised.

GERRY L. SPENCE

From Freedom to Slavery


The way they do things here is they transform slavery. They always transform it into something else and call it another name. And people get up here and start talking about how slavery is mass incarceration. How slavery is justice for sale. How slavery is over-policing. How slavery is injustice in the courts, racism. I don't give a damn about no racism, I give a damn about slavery. Without slavery, those racists wouldn't have a damn power. They wouldn't have the power they have right now. They wouldn't have it. They couldn't do anything to you, but right now, those men [pointing to police] could come over here, could put a gun in my face, and put me in a jail cell any damn time they feel like it.

MAX PARTHAS

speech at the Millions For Prisoners Human Rights March in Washington, D.C., August 19, 2017


But one of the worst results of being a slave and being forced to do things is that when there is no one to force you any more you find you have almost lost the power of forcing yourself.

C. S. LEWIS

The Horse and His Boy

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To subjugate another is to subjugate yourself.

ELBERT HUBBARD

The American Bible

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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"

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Not only do I pray for it, on the score of human dignity, but I can clearly foresee that nothing but the rooting out of slavery can perpetuate the existence of our union, by consolidating it in a common bond of principle.

GEORGE WASHINGTON

attributed, Retrospections of America


We say that slavery has vanished from European civilization, but this is not true. Slavery still exists, but now it applies only to women and its name is prostitution.

VICTOR HUGO

Les Misérables

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Slavery is no scholar, no improver; it does not love the whistle of the railroad; it does not love the newspaper, the mail-bag, a college, a book or a preacher who has the absurd whim of saying what he thinks; it does not increase the white population; it does not improve the soil; everything goes to decay.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

speech, August 1, 1844

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So we are all black people, so-called Negroes, second-class citizens, ex-slaves. You are nothing but an ex-slave. You don't like to be told that. But what else are you? You are ex-slaves. You didn't come here on the Mayflower. You came here on a slave ship -- in chains, like a horse, or a cow, or a chicken. And you were brought here by the people who came here on the Mayflower. You were brought here by the so-called Pilgrims, or Founding Fathers. They were the ones who brought you here.

MALCOLM X

Message to the Grass Roots, November 10, 1963

Tags: Malcolm X


In nothing was slavery so savage and relentless as in its attempted destruction of the family instincts of the Negro race in America. Individuals, not families; shelters, not homes; herding, not marriages, were the cardinal sins in that system of horrors.

FANNIE BARRIER WILLIAMS

Black Women in Nineteenth-Century American Life

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Hatred, slavery's inevitable aftermath.

JOSÉ MARTÍ

Woman Suffrage

Tags: José Martí