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Quotes About Slavery

What are blessings in freedom are curses in slavery.
~ Aesop
I t is not a dead society that we want to revive. We leave that to those who go in for exoticism. Nor is it the present colonial society that we wish to prolong, the most putrid carrion that ever rotted under the sun. It is a new society that we must create, with the help of all our brother slaves, a society rich with all the productive power of modern times, warm with all the fraternity of olden days.
~ Aimé Césaire
Whether one likes it or not, the bourgeoisie, as a class, is condemned to take responsibility for all the barbarism of history, the tortures of the Middle Ages and the Inquisition, warmongering and the appeal to the raison d'Etat, racism and slavery, in short everything against which it protested in unforgettable terms at the time when, as the attacking class, it was the incarnation of human progress.
~ Aimé Césaire
Abraham Lincoln, cleaving to the Constitution, had stipulated that the preservation of the Union, not the abolition of slavery, was the issue of this war, and Congress formally backed him in asserting just that with the Crittenden Resolution.
~ Alan Axelrod
Slave owners invested a growing amount of capital in their slaves: by 1861, almost half the total value of the South's capital assets was in the "value of negroes.
~ Alan Greenspan
The recessional of "Amazing Grace" was familiar to all. John Newton had written the hymn, and I wondered how many people in the church knew that he'd been a slave-ship captain before realizing the error of his ways and becoming an abolitionist.
~ Alan Russell
Al igual que nuestro pariente el chimpancé, siempre nos hemos matado unos a otros para disputarnos el territorio y las hembras, pero con el advenimiento de la esclavitud nos redujimos a nosotros mismos a algo nuevo: a un cultivo de exportación.
~ Alan Weisman
When people think of slavery, they think of an era from the distant past. Grainy photographs from Civil War times. And yet it goes on.
~ Lisa Kristine
I found a correlation between the spreading of democracy after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise in slavery. Now, as countries, former Communist countries, became so-called democratic, people started to be enslaved by their own countrymen.
~ Loretta Napoleoni
When you look at a corporation, just like when you look at a slave owner, you want to distinguish between the institution and the individual. So slavery, for example, or other forms of tyranny, are inherently monstrous. The individuals participating in them may be the nicest guys you can imagine.
~ Noam Chomsky
I am an opponent of war and of war preparations and an opponent of universal military training and conscription; but entirely apart from that issue, I hold that segregation in any part of the body politic is an act of slavery and an act of war.
~ Bayard Rustin
The Confederate flag was the flag of the American South during the civil war. It was the flag of people who were fighting against their own government in an attempt to retain slavery. It was the flag of people who thought slavery was no problem, who thought slavery was a good thing.
~ John Niven
Unsoundness in a slave, as well as in a horse, detracts materially from his value. If no warranty is given, a close examination is a matter of particular importance to the Negro jockey.
~ Solomon Northup
It can be safely asserted that since early Colonial times, the North has had a distinct race problem. Every one of these States had slaves, and at the beginning of Washington's Administration, there were 40,000 black slaves and 17,000 black freemen in this section.
~ W. E. B. Du Bois
My mother was born in your state, Mr. Walter, and my mother was a Quaker, and my ancestors in the time of Washington baked bread for George Washington's troops when they crossed the Delaware, and my own father was a slave.
~ Paul Robeson
Rather than lead people to a "liberated happiness," these laws are destined to lead people to a pitiful darkening of the mind, a weakening of the will, and slavery to sin.
~ Ralph Martin
Breathe. Slow. Observe. Break the link between sensation and reaction. Breathe into the gap between them. Blind reaction is attachment. Blind reaction is slavery. Freedom exists in the gap. Choice exists in the gap.
~ Ramez Naam
Breathe. Slow. Observe. Break the link between sensation and reaction. Breathe into the gap between them. Blind reaction is attachment. Blind reaction is slavery. Freedom exists in the gap. Choice exists in the gap. I exist in the gap. Let go of attachment to my fear, he told himself. Let go of attachment to myself. Let go of attachment to my life. That's the secret to living.
~ Ramez Naam
Breathe. Slow. Observe. Break the link between sensation and reaction. Breathe into the gap between them. Blind reaction is attachment. Blind reaction is slavery. Freedom exists in the gap. Choice exists in the gap. I exist in the gap.
~ Ramez Naam
Trouble is, George Washington is not my ancestor, private or public. He owned my ancestors, abused them as chattel and willed them to his wife, Martha, upon his death. I and mine need to know about George and Martha but, assuredly, we do not need to revere them. Indeed, psychically we cannot afford to revere them.
~ Randall Robinson
This book is about the great still-unfolding massive crime of official and unofficial America against Africa, African slaves, and their descendants in America.
~ Randall Robinson
As Germany and other interests that profited owed reparations to Jews following the holocaust of Nazi persecution, America and other interests that profited owe reparations to blacks following the holocaust of African slavery which has carried forward from slavery's inception for 350-odd years to the end of U.S. government–embraced racial discrimination–an end that arrived, it would seem, only just yesterday.
~ Randall Robinson
While there were those like Thomas Paine who found the whole business of the slave trade abhorrent, they were far outnumbered by slaveholders who, among other things, forced female slaves into sexual service.
~ Randall Robinson
The founders of Brown University, Nicholas and Joseph Brown, got their wealth by manufacturing and selling slave ships and investing in the slave trade. –The Black Holocaust for Beginners, S. E. Anderson
~ Randall Robinson