Quotes About Slaves

We are Turks with the affections of our women; and have made them subscribe to our doctrine too. We let their bodies go abroad liberally enough, with smiles and ringlets and pink bonnets to disguise them instead of veils and yakmaks. But their souls must be seen by only one man, and they obey not unwillingly, and consent to remain at home as our slaves—ministering to us and doing drudgery for us.

If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

In my opinion, however, disasters such as these teach men this lesson with regard to anger: one ought not to punish even a slave in anger; for masters who have lost their tempers often do more harm to themselves than they inflict; but in dealing with enemies it is utterly and entirely wrong to launch an attack under the influence of anger and without deliberation. Anger does not look ahead, whereas deliberation is just as concerned with avoiding harm oneself as with inflicting it on the enemy.

At the heart of Deuteronomy stands chapter 15, with its laws on the release of debts and slaves.

The Vikings... establishing themselves as the Rus, a word that is thought to come from an old Norse term, rods, meaning "men in row". Islamic sources say they then subjugated the Slavic peoples, who were traded as slaves along a network that reached across the Black Sea as far as Islamic Baghdad. ("Slav" possibly comes from their being traded as slaves by the Rus).

To limit the press is to insult a nation to prohibit reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or slaves.

War is father of all, and king of all. He renders some gods, others men; he makes some slaves, others free.

War is the father of all and the king of all; it proves some people gods, and some people men; it makes some people slaves and some people free.

War, as father of all things, and king, names few to serve as gods, and of the rest makes these men slaves, those free.

Although Christianity has a poor record on animals (as it does, it must be said, on the treatment of slaves, women, children, and gays), it is also the case that Christian theology, when creatively and critically handled, can provide a strong basis for animal rights.

Liberty may be an uncomfortable blessing unless you know what to do with it. That is why so many freed slaves returned to their masters, why so many emancipated women are only too glad to give up the racket and settle down. For between announcing that you will live your own life, and the living of it lie the real difficulties of any awakening.

The purposeful restriction of knowledge has been at the heart of untold misery and hardship in this world. Serfs were kept illiterate so as to not jeopardize the feudal system. Slaves were kept in the dark on a variety of subjects so as to not provide them the possibility of escape.

I do not subscribe to the doctrine that the people are the slaves and property of their government. I believe that government is for the use of the people, and not the people for the use of the government.

On the shining yards of heaven See a wider dawn unfurled. . . . The eternal slaves of beauty Are the masters of the world.

Indeed, to make tobacco in large enough quantities to satisfy the needs and the quotas from markets in England, the Virginia nobility—the true gentlemen farmers—became accustomed to building and maintaining their vast plantations by the utilization of great numbers of slaves, who cared not only for their masters' fields, but also for their bodies, their horses, their houses, and their children.

In Providence, one of the officers who distributed Indian slaves was the elderly Roger Williams, to whom Ousamequin had provided refuge when he fled the religious persecution of Massachusetts puritans in the winter of 1635–36.

Sorrow and desolation have their songs," wrote Douglass, "as well as joy and peace. Slaves sing more to make themselves happy, than to express their happiness.

In 'Bayou Magic,' I write about African goddess-mermaids who accompanied slaves to America.

Freedom hath a thousand charms to show, That slaves however contented never know.

If you push people beyond the threshold, you make them slaves of the moment. Tomorrow is a luxury.

Ezra Rothschild Johnson was one of a family of black activists who helped runaway slaves find refuge on the whalers of Fairhaven and New Bedford.

Most useless things in the world, men," she muttered as she sent her female slaves scurrying here and there. "They only get in one's way whenever anything important needs to be done.

Marriage: A community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all, two.

Owing to the conditions of capitalist exploitation, the modern wage slaves are so crushed by want and poverty that "they cannot be bothered with democracy", "cannot be bothered with politics"; in the ordinary, peaceful course of events, the majority of the population is debarred from participation in public and political life.