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Quotes About Slavery

I didn't like '12 Years a Slave' because it was playing to the Spielbergian model of redemption.
~ Hilton Als
To reduce this claim of slavery to an absurdity, it is only necessary to add that there are only two states in which slaves are a majority, and not one in which the slaveholders are not a very disproportionate minority.
~ William H. Seward
Being in Harlem on the night of Barack Obama's election was extraordinary. It was the best street party I have ever gone to, and it felt like the period of American history which began with slavery had ended that evening.
~ Hari Kunzru
There are two things that have always haunted me: the brutality of the European traders and the stories I've heard about Africans selling other Africans into slavery.
~ Henry Louis Gates
It has always been a great wrong that these men and their families should be held in bondage.
~ Robert Dale Owen
The well-stuffed slave masters currently gorging themselves in Cuba's halls of power need to be held accountable.
~ Robert Zubrin
Modern slavery is a hidden crime and notoriously difficult to measure.
~ Mo Ibrahim
Why is Slavery so much condemn'd and strove against in one Case, and so highly applauded and held so necessary and so sacred in another?
~ Mary Astell
Thou art beautiful because God created thee, but thou art a slave to sin... wickedness has made you ugly.
~ George MacDonald
From the neglect of a real duty, she became the slave of a false one.
~ George MacDonald
But it is not the rich man only who is under the dominion of things; they too are slaves who, having no money, are unhappy from the lack of it. The man who is ever digging his grave is little better than he who already lies mouldering in it. The money the one has, the money the other would have, is in each the cause of an eternal stupidity.
~ George MacDonald
A plongeur is a slave, and a wasted slave, doing stupid and largely unnecessary work. He is kept at work, ultimately, because of a vague feeling that he would be dangerous if he had leisure. And educated people, who should be on his side, acquiesce in the process, because they know nothing about him and consequently are afraid of him.
~ George Orwell
Comrade, said Snowball, those ribbons that you are so devoted to are the badge of slavery. Can you not understand that liberty is worth more than ribbons? Mollie agreed, but she did not sound very convinced.
~ George Orwell
Cómo vas a tener un eslogan como el de la libertad es la esclavitud cuando el concepto de libertad no exista? Todo el clima del pensamiento será distinto. En realidad, no habrá pensamiento en el sentido en que ahora lo entendemos. La ortodoxia significa no pensar, no necesitar el pensamiento. Nuestra ortodoxia es la inconsciencia.
~ George Orwell
A slave, Marcus Cato said, should be working when he is not sleeping. It does not matter whether his work is needed or not, he must work, because work in itself is good—for slaves, at least. This sentiment still survives, and it has piled up mountains of useless drudgery.
~ George Orwell
La guerra es paz, la libertad es esclavitud, la ignorancia es la fuerza
~ George Orwell
war hysteria is continuous and universal in all countries, and such acts as raping, looting, the slaughter of children, the reduction of whole populations to slavery, and reprisals against prisoners which extend even to boiling and burying alive, are looked upon as normal, and, when they are committed by one's own side and not by the enemy, meritorious. But
~ George Orwell
you do not escape from money by being moneyless. On the contrary, you are the hopeless slave of money until you have enough of it to live on
~ George Orwell
If PLONGEURS thought at all, they would long ago have formed a union and gone on strike for better treatment. But they do not think, because they have no leisure for it; their life has made slaves of them.
~ George Orwell
A slave, Marcus Cato said, should be working when he is not sleeping. It does not matter whether his work is needed or not, he must work, because work in itself is good—for slaves, at least.
~ George Orwell
How could you have a slogan like 'freedom is slavery' when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.
~ George Orwell
A slave, Marcus Cato said, should be working when he is not sleeping. It does not matter whether his work in itself is good in itself—for slaves, at least. This sentiment still survives, and it has piled up mountains of useless drudgery. I believe that this instinct to perpetuate useless work is, at bottom, simply fear of the mob. The mob (the thought runs) are such low animals that they would be dangerous if they had leisure; it is safer to keep them too busy to think
~ George Orwell
To sum up. A plongeur is a slave, and a wasted slave, doing stupid and largely unnecessary work. He is kept at work, ultimately, because of a vague feeling that he would be dangerous if he had leisure.
~ George Orwell
How could you have a slogan like freedom is slavery when the concept of freedom had been abolished
~ George Orwell