Slavery Quotes
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Emancipate yourself from mental slavery, None but ourselves can free our minds. Have no fear for atomic energy, 'Cause none of them can stop the time.
Bob Marley
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I have always hated slavery, I think, as much as any abolitionist. I have been an Old Line Whig. I have always hated it, but I have always been quiet about it until this new era of the introduction of the Nebraska Bill began.
Abraham Lincoln
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From the very first, it has been the educated and intelligent of the Negro people that have led and elevated the mass, and the sole obstacles that nullified and retarded their efforts were slavery and race prejudice; for what is slavery but the legalized survival of the unfit and the nullification of the work of natural internal leadership?
W. E. B. Du Bois
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There was no United States before slavery. I am sure somebody can make some sort of argument about modern French identity and slavery and North Africa, but there simply is no American history before black people.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
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Money originated with royalty and slavery, it has nothing to do with democracy or the struggle of the empoverished enslaved majority.
Aristotle
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The moment the slave resolves that he will no longer be a slave, his fetters fall. ... Freedom and slavery are mental states. Therefore, the first thing to say to yourself: 'I shall no longer accept the role of a slave. I shall not obey orders as such but shall disobey them when they are in conflict with my conscience'.'
Mahatma Gandhi
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Imperialism and slavery are no white male monopoly, but are everywhere from Egypt, Assyria, and Persia to India, China and Japan.
Camille Paglia
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The inherited tradition is that we don't tell stories about slavery from the perspective of the slave. It's told through the president or the lawyer.
Chiwetel Ejiofor
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’Tain’t by turnin’ out to hack folksYou’re agoin’ to git your right,Nor by lookin’ down on black folksCoz you’re put upon by white;Slavery ain’t o’ nary color,’Tain’t the hide thet makes it wus,All it keers fer in a feller’S jest to make him fill its pus.
James Russell Lowell
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I walked around feeling, in a sense, that people of color, we began at the bottom of a slave ship. We were enslaved; we picked cotton. There was Honest Abe, who wore a top hat and was taller than anyone and who said, 'Enough is enough; slavery must end.' And then, black people could stand up again. But after that, we didn't catch up.
Nate Parker
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I am a firm believer in slavery.
Brigham Young
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When Southern people tell us they are no more responsible for the origin of slavery than we are, I acknowledge the fact. When it is said that the institution exists, and that it is very difficult to get rid of it in any satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate the saying.
Abraham Lincoln
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The slavery of Negroes in the South was not usually a deliberately cruel and oppressive system. It did not mean systematic starvation or murder.
W. E. B. Du Bois
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Without slavery the rebellion could never have existed; without slavery it could not continue.
Abraham Lincoln
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In a word, if any kind of slavery can be vindicated by the Holy Scriptures, we are already sure our making and holding the Negroes our slaves, as we do, cannot be vindicated by any thing we can find there, but is condemned by the whole of divine revelation.
Samuel Hopkins
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We can constitutionally extirpate slavery at this time. But if we fail to do this, then unless we intend hereafter to violate the Constitution, we shall have a fugitive slave law in operation whenever the war is over.
Jay Alan Sekulow
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Under slavery, families were ripped apart, and it was a desire of black men and black women to be together with their loved ones. Family meant something. Spouses meant something.
Derrick Grayson
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The real names of our people were destroyed during slavery. The last name of my forefathers was taken from them when they were brought to America and made slaves, and then the name of the slave master was given, which we refuse, we reject that name today and refuse it. I never acknowledge it whatsoever.
Malcolm X
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Why was the amendment, expressly declaring the right of the people to exclude slavery, voted down? Plainly enough now, the adoption of it would have spoiled the niche for the Dred Scott decision.
Abraham Lincoln
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I think slavery is the next thing to hell. If a person would send another into bondage, he would, it appears to me, be bad enough to send him into hell if he could.
Harriet Tubman
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As the anti-slavery community, we must together ensure that this attention is transferred into concrete action and results.
Kailash Satyarthi
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There was not a single Negro slave owner who did not know dozens of Negroes just as capable of learning and efficiency as the mass of poor white people around and about, and some quite as capable as the average slaveholder. They had continually, in the course of the history of slavery, recognized such men.
W. E. B. Du Bois