SLAVERY QUOTES V

quotations about slavery

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

GEORGE ORWELL

Nineteen Eighty-Four

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Let every voice be thunder, let every heart beat strong
Until all tyrants perish our work shall not be done
Let not our memories fail us the lost year shall be found
Let slavery's chains be broken the whole wide world around.

PETER, PAUL & MARY

"Because All Men Are Brothers"


Talk about slavery! It is not the peculiar institution of the South. It exists wherever men are bought and sold, wherever a man allows himself to be made a mere thing or a tool, and surrenders his inalienable rights of reason and conscience. Indeed, this slavery is more complete than that which enslaves the body alone.... I never yet met with, or heard of, a judge who was not a slave of this kind, and so the finest and most unfailing weapon of injustice. He fetches a slightly higher price than the black men only because he is a more valuable slave.

HENRY DAVID THOREAU

journal, December 4, 1860

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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"


It was considered as being bad enough to be a slave; but to be a poor man's slave was deemed a disgrace indeed!

FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

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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


Gluttonized foundation
Well versed in the art of slavery
Patrons of feudal interest
Scurry around a concrete beehive
Crazed civilization frantically going nowhere

DISCORDANCE AXIS

"Empire"


All mankind is divided, as it was at all times and is still, into slaves and freemen; for whoever has not two-thirds of his day for himself is a slave, be he otherwise whatever he likes, statesman, merchant, official, or scholar.

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

Complete Works: The First Complete and Authorised English Translation, Volume 6

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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

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It is the mind of man alone that is the cause of his bondage or freedom.

CHANAKYA

Vridda-Chanakya

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Slavery is a continual and permanent violation of human rights.

DANIEL WEBSTER

letter to Rev. Mr. Furness, February 15, 1850

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The turpitude, the inhumanity, the cruelty, and the infamy of the African commerce in slaves have been so impressively represented to the public by the highest powers of eloquence that nothing that I can say would increase the just odium in which it is and ought to be held. Every measure of prudence, therefore, ought to be assumed for the eventual total extirpation of slavery from the United States.

JOHN ADAMS

letter to T. Robert J. Evans, June 8, 1819

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Once slavery in America was not seen as radical. It became, instead, a revolutionary idea that slaves should be freed. When we have lived under a pernicious power long enough, no matter how oppressive, we grow so accustomed to the yoke that its removal seems frightening, even wrong.

GERRY L. SPENCE

From Freedom to Slavery

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If there is a State, there must be domination of one class by another and, as a result, slavery; the State without slavery is unthinkable -- and this is why we are the enemies of the State.

MIKHAIL BAKUNIN

"Statism and Anarchy"

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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

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Better freedom with a crust, than slavery with every luxury.

CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE

Intuitions and Summaries of Thought

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Now the slave emerges as a freeman; all the rigid, hostile walls which either necessity or despotism has erected between men are shattered. Now that the gospel of universal harmony is sounded, each individual becomes not only reconciled to his fellow but actually one with him -- as though the veil of Maya had been torn apart and there remained only shreds floating before the vision of mystical Oneness.

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

Nietzsche Selections


Do you, do you remember those days of slavery?
It wasn't black man alone, who died thru bravery.
'Though some a dem threw dem self over board,
because dis ya slaveship overload.

EEK-A-MOUSE

"Do You Remember"


It seemed to me much more than the mere question whether the negro should remain in slavery; that it really involved the question whether liberty should be strangled on the continent dedicated to liberty.

LYMAN ABBOTT

Reminiscences

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Ye men of sense and virtue -- Ye advocates for American liberty, rouse up and espouse the cause of humanity and general liberty. Bear a testimony against a vice which degrades human nature, and dissolves that universal tie of benevolence which should connect all the children of men together in one great family -- The plant of liberty is of so tender a nature, that it cannot thrive long in the neighbourhood of slavery.

BENJAMIN RUSH

"On Slavekeeping", 1773