Slavery Quotes
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Our touchstones of slavery are 'Song of the South,' 'Gone With the Wind' and 'The Birth of a Nation.' It's hard to separate the cinematic quality from the underlying themes. I appreciate the films, but the message was repugnant.
John Ridley
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As my ancestors are free from slavery, I am free from the slavery of religion.
Butterfly McQueen
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This year has begun hopefully for right thinkers. After all these centuries of feudal barbarism and political slavery, it is surprising to see how the word of 'liberty' sets minds on fire.
Napoleon Bonaparte
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Slavery in West Africa, and in Rome and in the Mediterranean, was something different than slavery in America.
Edward Ball
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Slavery will not be overthrown without excitement, a most tremendous excitement.
William Lloyd Garrison
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Slavery is the most insane thing... I don't know that we've ever seen in history, but it's got to be close. The idea of slavery is such a base impulse. It's like, "I'm going to kidnap you and then you're going to do everything I want." Like, what? And then there's the historical aspect. It had a huge effect on human history.
Neal Brennan
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I've never taught one, because if I taught one, I'd have to teach others... I would give myself over to a slavery, whereas I want to stay a free man.
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek
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My grandfather was born in 1920. His grandfather was born in 1860, at the beginning of the Civil War, into an America where slavery had yet to be abolished. And so, as I have sometimes thought about it, I dodged slavery by just five generations.
Benjamin Watson
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As one southern-born antislavery activist later wrote, it was a “sad satire to call the States ‘United,’” because in one-half of the country slavery was basic to its way of life while in the other it was fading or already gone. The founding fathers tried to stitch these two nations together with no idea how long the stitching would hold.
Andrew Delbanco
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The way animals are carted around reminds me of the slavery of my people... The slavery of animals has to be ended too.
Benjamin Zephaniah
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Ending the slave trade was contrary to British economic interests. For all its limitations and hypocrisies - British slavery itself, of course, still continued to exist - I still think it was a great moment in human history.
Henry Louis Gates
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I would not have a slave to till my ground, To carry me, to fan me while I sleep, And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth That sinews bought and sold have ever earn'd.
William Cowper
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The Soul of man is made an article of merchandize by his fellow man and can such a land be happy? No! Happyness does not dwell in any land that is scard by the blighting curse of Slavery.
Ezra Cornell
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Copying is slavery. The letter must never be followed, only the spirit is to be grasped. Higher affirmations live in the spirit. And where is the spirit? Seek it in your everyday experience, and therein lies abundance of proof for all you need.
D. T. Suzuki
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Humans call animals 'dumb'... after they robbed their entire own precious world. They are intelligent beings in their own right, and thoroughly self-sufficient... if not molested by humans. Yet, after millennia of slavery by selfish/callous humans they're made to look dumb! The 'superior species' in their situations would, too, appear 'dumb'.
Adela Popescu
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Poor dusky children of slavery, men and women of my own race-the transition from slavery to freedom was too sudden for you! The bright dreams were too rudely dispelled; you were not prepared for the new life that opened before you, and the great masses of the North learned to look upon your helplessness with indifference-learned to speak of you as an idle, dependent race. Reason should have prompted kinder thoughts. Charity is ever kind.
Elizabeth Keckley
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We are not one people. We are two peoples. We are a people for Freedom and a people for Slavery. Between the two, conflict is inevitable.
Horace Greeley
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If you want to understand America, it's slavery.
Colson Whitehead
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Lots of old slaves closes the door before they tell the truth about their days of slavery.
Martin Jackson
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The Americans say that we are ungrateful-but I ask them for heaven's sake, what should we be grateful to them for-for murdering our fathers and mothers?-Or do they wish us to return thanks to them for chaining and handcuffing us, branding us, cramming fire down our throats, or for keeping us in slavery, and beating us nearly or quite to death to make us work in ignorance and miseries, to support them and their families. They certainly think we are a gang of fools.
David Walker
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If you're creating a slave situation, you would almost never bring women. And if we look at Slavery for example, we look at the Greeks and the Romans, right? It was always men. They never brought any women. Because women carry the seeds of the revolution, right? And if you have the men by themselves, then you can do what the French did with the Blackfeet, which is breed them out.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr.
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Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs Receive our air, that moment they are free; They touch our country, and their shackles fall.
William Cowper
