Quotes About Slavery

Liberal" in the nineteenth-century United States and Europe designated people who in many, but not all, respects would be called conservatives in the twenty-first century. They embraced minimal government, a free market economy, individualism, and property rights; they attacked slavery, aristocracy, monarchy, standing armies, the Catholic Church, and hereditary authority.

Kill me, Doug. Just kill me now. Put me out of my misery." "Christ, Kincaid, what did you say to him?" murmured Doug. "Well," I told Doug, "I ripped on his fans and on how long it takes for his books to come out." Doug stared at me, his expectations exceeded. "Then I said—not knowing who he was—that I'd be Seth Mortensen's love slave in exchange for advanced copies of his books.

BELINDA'S PETITION (Boston, February 1782) To the honorable Senate and House of Representatives of this Country, new born: I am Belinda, an African, since the age of twelve a Slave. I will not take too much of your Time, but to plead and place my pitiable Life unto the Fathers of this Nation. Lately your Countrymen have severed the Binds of Tyranny. I would hope you would consider the Same for me, pure Air being the sole Advantage of which I can boast in my present Condition.

That we were slaves I had known all my life--and nothing could be done about it. True, we weren't bought and sold--but as long as Authority held monopoly over what we had to have and what we could sell to buy it, we were slaves.

That we were slaves I had known all my life—and nothing could be done about it. True, we weren't bought and sold—but as long as Authority held monopoly over what we had to have and what we could sell to buy it, we were slaves.

It needs to be understood that--as Reich points out--Fascism is not a 20th Century invention. With the institution of slavery, the glorification of conquest and the subjugation of women, the Fascist or Dominator State already appears in history. All the early agricultural/monarchist systems contained the full body of Fascist theory and practice; Hitler and Mussolini merely revived this system after it had appeared to be in eclipse due to industrialism and democracy.

I dreamed I called D.A.F. de Sade on the phone and asked him, Jesus told me that he and you agree on at least one thing and it explains freedom. What is that one thing? Quite simple, he replied, don't be afraid of the Cross. The fear of death is the beginning of slavery. And the line went dead with a triumphant click like a barred door falling open.

There can of course be no doubt that any sort of addiction, whether to opiates, barbiturates, or alcohol, is always an evil and always involves slavery. Society, however, when it shoulders responsibility for preventing such abuse, treads on very slippery ground. The real situation tends to become clouded by misconceptions, and legislation is often enacted which tends to aggravate the very evils it was intended to prevent. Robert DeRopp, M.D., Drugs and the Mind

The American narrative is morally unresolvable because the society that saved humanity in the great conflicts of the twentieth century was also a society built on enormous crimes—slavery and the extinction of the native inhabitants.

The Founders' Constitution is a deal. You get an American nation, but you must accept slavery. That's a bargain with evil, a deal with the devil. And like most deals with the devil, it doesn't work out very well.

As my ancestors are free from slavery, I am free from the slavery of religion.

Of course slavery and the Muslims were deeply implicated in the slave trade, Islam was an Imperialist religion which destroyed Christianity in the Near East, yet nobody mentions those facts.

A man who feels that his religion is a slavery has not begun to comprehend the real nature of religion.

I could not comprehend the justice of that law, or that religion, which upholds or recognizes the principle of slavery.

Formal religion was organized for slaves: it offered them consolation which earth did not provide.

I want to know whether you are a person devoted to creating or to exchanging in some respect or other: as a creator you belong tothe free, as an exchanger you are their slave and instrument.

Humiliation, slavery, fear have perverted us to the bone; we no longer look like men... . Men must be granted the respect due to them.

Look, [Mitt] Romney comes from a religion founded by a criminal who was anti-American, pro-slavery, and a rapist. And he comes from that lineage and says, 'I respect this religion fully.'

I do not wish, it happens, to be associated with Massachusetts, either in holding slaves or in conquering Mexico. I am a little better than herself in these respects.

Even worse, greedy bosses might curtail the workers' freedom of movement through debt peonage or slavery. At the end of the Middle Ages, slavery was almost unknown in Christian Europe. During the early modern period, the rise of European capitalism went hand in hand with the rise of the Atlantic slave trade. Unrestrained market forces, rather than tyrannical kings or racist ideologues, were responsible for this calamity.

Shepherds and farmers throughout history showed affection for their animals and have taken great care of them, just as many slaveholders felt affection and concern for their slaves.

Paradoxically, genetic superiority (in terms of immunity) translated into social inferiority: precisely because Africans were fitter in tropical climates than Europeans, they ended up as the slaves of European masters! Due to these circumstantial factors, the burgeoning new societies of America were to be divided into a ruling caste of white Europeans and a subjugated caste of black Africans.

At the end of the Middle Ages, slavery was almost unknown in Christian Europe. During the early modern period, the rise of European capitalism went hand in hand with the rise of the Atlantic slave trade.

From the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, about 10 million African slaves were imported to America. About 70 per cent of them worked on the sugar plantations.