Quotes About Slavery

Slavery was, in fact, a social system designed to destroy social capital among slaves and between slaves and freemen.

There is a terrible war coming, and these young men who have never seen war cannot wait for it to happen, but I tell you, I wish that I owned every slave in the South, for I would free them all to avoid this war.

There is a simple rule, anyone whose cellphone rings while I am speaking will be sold immediately into slavery

Justice is the only worship.Love is the only priest.Ignorance is the only slavery.Happiness is the only good.The time to be happy is now,The place to be happy is here,The way to be happy is to make others so.

I will not attack your doctrines nor your creeds if they accord liberty to me. If they hold thought to be dangerous - if they aver that doubt is a crime, then I attack them one and all, because they enslave the minds of men. I attack the monsters, the phantoms of imagination that have ruled the world. I attack slavery. I ask for room -- room for the human mind.

Nearly all people stand in great horror of annihilation, and yet to give up your individuality is to annihilate yourself. Mental slavery is mental death, and every man who has given up his intellectual freedom is the living coffin of his dead soul.

There is no slavery but ignorance. Liberty is the child of intelligence.

With every drop of my blood I hate and execrate every form of tyranny, every form of slavery. I hate dictation. I love liberty.

It will probably will not be long until the churches will divide as sharply upon political, as upon theological questions; and when that day comes, if there are not liberals enough to hold the balance of power, this Government will be destroyed. The liberty of man is not safe in the hands of any church. Wherever the Bible and sword are in partnership, man is a slave. 1879

When I think of how much this world has suffered; when I think of how long our fathers were slaves, of how they cringed and crawled at the foot of the throne, and in the dust of the altar, of how they abased themselves, of how abjectly they stood in the presence of superstition robed and crowned, I am amazed.

Religion can never reform mankind, because religion is slavery.

I never will, I never can, worship a God who upholds the institution of slavery. Such a God I hate and defy. I neither want his heaven, nor fear his hell.

He bade the slave ships speed from coast to coast, Fanned by the wings of the Holy Ghost.

When reading the history of the Jewish people, of their flight from slavery to death, of their exchange of tyrants, I must confess that my sympathies are all aroused in their behalf.

Subjects who are governed by the threats and promises of a king are merely slaves. They are not governed by the ideal, by noble views of right and wrong. They are obedient cowards, controlled by fear, or beggars governed by rewards—by alms.

Mental slavery is mental death, and every man who has given up his intellectual freedom is the living coffin of his dead soul. In this sense, every church is a cemetery and every creed an epitaph.

Mental slavery is mental death, and every man who has given up his intellectual freedom is the living coffin of his dead soul.

Justice is the only worship. Love is the only priest. Ignorance is the only slavery. Happiness is the only good. The time to be happy is now, The place to be happy is here, The way to be happy is to make others so. Wisdom is the science of happiness.

The phrase American Dream has a ring of truth to it as a statement of American values. The United States is a proud country that has no aristocracy, allows no titles or royalty, announces in its Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal," and allows free enterprise to proceed with little government interference. However, it is also a country that permitted slavery until 1863.

While the morality of slavery alone might have eventually led to a showdown, it was America's sprawling growth that made the issue explosive.

For example, at the fall of Rome there was very extensive slavery everywhere in Europe; by the time of the "Renaissance" it was long gone.

Coates has effectively taken back this tarnished history and clarified the position of blacks in the fight against slavery. They are not passive victims waiting to be saved by enlightened whites. They are warriors, strategists and spies plotting their escape and struggling to remember everything. {from Charles' review of The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates]

I think that we Americans, at least in the Southern col[onie]s, cannot contend with a good grace for liberty until we shall have enfranchised our slaves," Laurens told a friend right before the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

George Washington noted the hypocrisy of the many slaveholding antifederalists: "It is a little strange that the men of large property in the South should be more afraid that the Constitution will produce an aristocracy or a monarchy than the genuine, democratical people of the East.