logo

Quotes About Slavery

The good man, though a slave, is free; the wicked, though he reigns, is a slave, and not the slave of a single man, but- what is worse - the slave of as many masters as he has vices.
~ Saint Augustine
For men in a state of freedom had thatch for their shelter, while slavery dwells beneath marble and gold.
~ Seneca the Younger
The weak-minded man is the slave of his vices and the dupe of his virtues.
~ Jean Antoine Petit-Senn
When some one boasted that at the Pythian games he had vanquished men, Diogenes replied, "Nay, I defeat men, you defeat slaves."
~ Diogenes
The Soul of man is made an article of merchandize by his fellow man and can such a land be happy? No! Happyness does not dwell in any land that is scard by the blighting curse of Slavery.
~ Ezra Cornell
If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose.
~ Henry David Thoreau
Charity, if you have the means, is a personal choice, but charity which is expected or compelled is simply a polite word for slavery.
~ Terry Goodkind
If you are not strong enough to fight you have no choice but to accept the life of a slave. The hunter is a free being who cannot submit himself to slavery. For him there is no choice but to fight. If he dies in that fight, at least he will die as a free being, and not as a slave.
~ Théun Mares
Racism is an effect of slavery, not the other way around. Once slavery was abolished, not only did racism not disappear, neither did the economic system it upheld.
~ Sarah Churchwell
Slavery in New Hampshire was never legally abolished, unless Abraham Lincoln did it. The State itself has not ever pronounced any emancipation edict.
~ Thomas Bailey Aldrich
You can't understand what happened to Michael Brown in Ferguson, you can't understand what happened to Eric Garner in New York City, without understanding this narrative of racial difference that was created during the slave years.
~ Bryan Stevenson
Because I think we forget something about slavery: There was an enormous amount of sexual license. People talk about, well, the money; the economy; the this…But you realize if you own a human being, you really own them. You can get them—boys, girls—to do anything you say, on pain of death. That's what it means to own a human being.
~ Nikki Giovanni
Free yourself from one passion to be dominated by another and nobler one. But is not that, too, a form of slavery? To sacrifice oneself to an idea, to a race, to God? Or does it mean that the higher the model the longer the longer the tether of our slavery?
~ Nikos Kazantzakis
Free yourself from one passion to be dominated by another and nobler one. But is not that, too, a form of slavery? To sacrifice oneself to an idea, to a race, to God? Or does it mean that the higher the model the longer the tether of our slavery? Then we can enjoy ourselves and frolic in a more spacious arena and die without having come to the end of the tether. Is that, then, what we call liberty?
~ Nikos Kazantzakis
Free your self from one passion to be dominated by another and nobler one. But isn't that, too, a form of slavery?
~ Nikos Kazantzakis
Yet slavery isn't the real cause of the trouble between the regions. It is economics. The South sells its cotton and sugar to England and Europe, and buys manufactured goods from those places instead of from the industrial North. The South has decided it has no need for the rest of the United States of America. Despite Mr. Lincoln's speeches against slavery, that is the sore that festers.
~ Noah Gordon
Well, I think that what used to be called, centuries ago, wage slavery is intolerable. And I don't think people ought to be forced to rent themselves in order to survive. I think that the economic institutions ought to be run democratically, by their participants, by the communities in which they exist, and so on; and I think basically through various kinds of free association.
~ Noam Chomsky
Rand Paul...said national health insurance is slavery. He said, I'm a physician, and if there's national health insurance, the government is forcing me to take care of somebody who is ill. Why should I be a slave to the state? Here we're getting capitalist pathology in its most extreme, lunatic form. It is the opposite of solidarity, mutual support, mutual help.
~ Noam Chomsky
What we have to do is trap them into consumerism. Carry out enough propaganda and teasers and so on to make freed slaves feel they've got to have these commodities. They go to the company store and they get them, they're in debt, and pretty soon they're trapped—the slave economy's back.
~ Noam Chomsky
In reality, a few years later a North–South compact permitted the slaveholding states to reinstitute a form of slavery by effectively criminalizing black life, providing a cheap and disciplined labor force for much of the industrial revolution, a system that persisted until World War II created the need for free labor. The ugly history is being reenacted under the vicious "drug war" of the past generation, since Ronald Reagan.
~ Noam Chomsky
If capital is privately controlled, then people are going to have to rent themselves in order to survive. Now, you can say, "they rent themselves freely, it's a free contract"—but that's a joke. If your choice is, "do what I tell you or starve," that's not a choice—it's in fact what was commonly referred to as wage slavery in more civilized times, like the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, for example.
~ Noam Chomsky
If capital is privately controlled, then people are going to have to run tonsils in order to survive. Now, you can say, they rent themselves freely, it's a free contract - but that's a joke. If you are choice is, do what I tell you are starve, that's not a choice - it's infact what was commonly referred to as 'wage slavery in more civilized times, like the eighteenth and nineenth centuries.
~ Noam Chomsky
The struggle against slavery went on forever, the struggle for women's rights has been going on for centuries, the effort to overcomewage slavery—that's been going on since the beginnings of the industrial revolution, we haven't advanced an inch. In fact, we're worse off than we were a hundred years ago in terms of understanding the issues. Well, okay, you just keep struggling.
~ Noam Chomsky
Now, you can say, "they rent themselves freely, it's a free contract"—but that's a joke. If your choice is, "do what I tell you or starve," that's not a choice—it's in fact what was commonly referred to as wage slavery in more civilized times, like the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, for example.
~ Noam Chomsky