Slavery Quotations | Page 5

Emancipate yourself from mental slavery

Emancipate yourself from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our mind. Have no fear for atomic energy, 'cause none of them can stop the time.

Slavery is ...an atrocious debasement of human nature.

What is the basic, the essential, the crucial principle that differentiates freedom from slavery? It is the principle of voluntary action versus physical coercion or compulsion.

The majority of those who are loosely identified by the term 'liberals' are afraid to let themselves discover that what they advocate is statism. They want to keep all the advantages and effects of capitalism, while destroying the cause, and they want to establish statism without its necessary effects. They do not want to know or to admit that they are the champions of dictatorship and slavery.

Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters.

A dogmatic belief in objective value is necessary to the very idea of a rule which is not tyranny or an obedience which is not slavery.

Poverty in a democracy is as much to be preferred to what is called prosperity under despots, as freedom is to slavery.

To subjugate another is to subjugate yourself.

Organized religion, being founded on superstition, is, perforce, not scientific. And all that which is not scientific - that is, truthful - must be bolstered up by force, fear and falsehood. Thus we always find slavery and organized religion going hand in hand.

If the hammer and the shuttle could move themselves, slavery would be unnecessary.

Money originated with royalty and slavery, it has nothing to do with democracy or the struggle of the empoverished enslaved majority.

The worst thing about slavery is that the slaves eventually get to like it.

My paramount objective in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not to either save or destroy Slavery.

I say now, however, as I have all the while said, that on the territorial question - that is, the question of extending slavery under the national auspices, - I am inflexible. I am for no compromise which assists or permits the extension of the institution on soil owned by the nation.

Let there be no compromise on the question of extending slavery. If there be, all our labor is lost, and, ere long, must be done again.

We believe that the spreading out and perpetuity of the institution of slavery impairs the general welfare. We believe - nay, we know, that that is the only thing that has ever threatened the perpetuity of the Union itself.

An inspection of the Constitution will show that the right of property in a slave in not "distinctly and expressly affirmed" in it.

Now what is Judge Douglas Popular Sovereignty? It is, as a principle, no other than that, if one man chooses to make a slave of another man, neither that other man nor anybody else has a right to object.

This is a world of compensations; and he who would be no slave, must consent to have no slave.

When Judge Douglas says that whoever, or whatever community, wants slaves, they have a right to have them, he is perfectly logical if there is nothing wrong in the institution; but if you admit that it is wrong, he cannot logically say that anybody has a right to do wrong.

The slave-breeders and slave-traders, are a small, odious and detested class, among you; and yet in politics, they dictate the course of all of you, and are as completely your masters, as you are the master of your own negroes.

You know I dislike slavery; and you fully admit the abstract wrong of it.

Slavery is wrong. If Slavery is right, all words, acts, laws, and Constitutions against it, are themselves wrong, and should be silenced, and swept away.

But, slavery is good for some people! ! ! As a good thing, slavery is strikingly peculiar, in this, that it is the only good thing which no man ever seeks the good of, for himself.

We want, and must have, a national policy, as to slavery, which deals with it as being wrong.

Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease.

I never knew a man who wished to be himself a slave. Consider if you know any good thing, that no man desires for himself.

I wish to see, in process of disappearing, that only thing which ever could bring this nation to civil war.

I wish all men to be free. I wish the material prosperity of the already free which I feel sure the extinction of slavery would bring.

What has ever threatened our liberty and prosperity save and except this institution of Slavery?

We were proclaiming ourselves political hypocrites before the world, by thus fostering Human Slavery and proclaiming ourselves, at the same time, the sole friends of Human Freedom.

I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so."

If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.

Marriage is but slavery made to appear civilized.

Insofar as we may at all claim that slavery has been abolished today, we owe its abolition to the practical consequences of science

Without slavery the rebellion could never have existed; without slavery it could not continue.

Free labor has the inspiration of hope; pure slavery has no hope.

If we cannot give freedom to every creature, let us do nothing that will impose slavery upon any other creature.

I did say, at Chicago, in my speech there, that I do wish to see the spread of slavery arrested and to see it placed where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction.

I think that one of the causes of these repeated failures is that our best and greatest men have greatly underestimated the size of this question (slavery). They have constantly brought forward small cures for great sores-plasters too small to cover the wound. That is one reason that all settlements have proved so temporary-so evanescent.

I think slavery is wrong, morally, and politically. I desire that it should be no further spread in these United States, and I should not object if it should gradually terminate in the whole Union.

In the first place, I insist that our fathers did not make this nation half slave and half free, or part slave and part free. I insist that they found the institution of slavery existing here. They did not make it so, but they left it so because they knew of no way to get rid of it at that time.

We think slavery a great moral wrong, and while we do not claim the right to touch it where it exists, we wish to treat it as a wrong in the territories, where our votes will reach it.

What I do say is, that no man is good enough to govern another man, without that other's consent. I say this is the leading principle - the sheet anchor of American republicanism.

In those days, our Declaration of Independence was held sacred by all, and thought to include all; but now, to aid in the making the bondage of the negro universal and eternal, it is assailed, and sneered at, and construed, and hawked at, and torn, till, if its framers could rise from their graves, they could not at all recognize it.

When the hour comes for dealing with slavery, I trust I will be willing to do my duty though it cost my life.

We must free the slaves or be ourselves subdued.

I am a little uneasy about the abolishment of slavery in this District of Columbia.

You can find justification for slavery in the Bible. Some say this is what the Bible says and that closes the argument.

Being born is like being kidnapped. And then sold into slavery. People are working every minute. The machinery is always going. Even when you sleep.

Something must happen; that is the reason for most human relationships. Something must happen; even servitude in love, in war, ordeath.

Serving one's own passions is the greatest slavery.

Although volume upon volume is written to prove slavery a very good thing, we never hear of the man who wishes to take the good of it by being a slave himself

Do not mistake your objection to defeat for an objection to fighting, your objection to being a slave for an objection to slavery, your objection to not being as rich as your neighbor for an objection to poverty. The cowardly, the insubordinate, and the envious share your objections.

Obligation may be stretched till it is no better than a brand of slavery stamped on us when we were too young to know its meaning.

Progress and reaction have both turned out to be swindles. Seemingly, there is nothing left but quietism - robbing reality of its terrors by simply submitting to it.

The life of an animal is misery and slavery: that is the plain truth.

Looking at the world as a whole, the drift for many decades has been not towards anarchy but towards the reimposition of slavery. We may be heading not for general breakdown but for an epoch as horribly stable as the slave empires of antiquity.

Money is the measure of morality, and the success or failure of slavery as a money-making system, determines with many whether...it should be maintained or abolished.

I escaped from slavery and became a leading abolitionist and speaker.

The Federal Government was never, in its essence, anything but an anti-slavery government.

Slaves are generally expected to sing as well as to work.

Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains.

This war, disguise it as they may, is virtually nothing more or less than perpetual slavery against universal freedoms.

Did John Brown fail? John Brown began the war that ended American slavery and made this a free Republic.

The Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT. Read its preamble, consider it purposes. Is slavery among them? Is it at the gateway? or is it in the temple? it is neither.

I hear the mournful wail of millions!

I am principled against this kind of traffic in the human species . . . and to disperse the families I have an aversion.

Not only do I pray for it, on the score of human dignity, but I can clearly forsee that nothing but the rooting out of slavery can perpetuate the existence of our union, by consolidating it in a common bond of principle.

They who are continually shocked by slavery have some right to be shocked by the violent death of the slaveholder, but no others.Such will be more shocked by his life than by his death.

The United States have a coffle of four millions of slaves. They are determined to keep them in this condition; and Massachusettsis one of the confederated overseers to prevent their escape.

Some are "industrious," and appear to love labor for its own sake, or perhaps because it keeps them out of worse mischief; to suchI have at present nothing to say. Those who would not know what to do with more leisure than they now enjoy, I might advise to work twice as hard as they do,--work till they pay for themselves, and get their free papers.

I am against slavery simply because I dislike slaves.

Racial segregation must be seen for what it is, and that is an evil system, a new form of slavery covered up with certain niceties of complexity.

When we decided to take up arms, it was because the only other choice was to surrender and to submit to slavery.

How perilous it is to free a people who prefer slavery.

They subjugate first, if the weaker peoples will stand for it; then exploit, and if they will not stand for SUBJUGATION nor EXPLOITATION, the other recourse is EXTERMINATION.

It does not matter what the whip is; it is none the less a whip, because you have cut thongs for it out of your own souls.

O execrable son! so to aspire Above his brethren, to himself assuming Authority usurped, from God not given. He gave us only over beast, fish, fowl, Dominion absolute; that right we hold By his donation; but man over men He made not lord; such title to himself Reserving, human left from human free.

Captivity is the greatest of all evils that can befall one.

Could slavery suggest a more complete servility than some of these journals exhibit? Is there any dust which their conduct does not lick, and make fouler still with its slime?

The moment the slave resolves that he will no longer be a slave, his fetters fall. Freedom and slavery are mental states.

It is only after slavery and prison that the sweetest appreciation of freedom can come.

Time is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. Truth is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. You don't need anything else.

A slave-holder cannot hold a slave without putting himself or his deputy in the cage for holding the slave.

No one chains a slave without chaining himself.

The way of mutual strife and exclusiveness is the only way to perdition and slavery.

To end slavery, you must overcome the mental and physical inertia of the masses and quicken their intelligence and creative faculty.

Compulsory obedience to a master is a state of slavery, willing obedience to one's father is the glory of son ship.

A slave- holder, who has decided to abolish slavery, does not consult his slaves whether they desire freedom or not.

My interest in India's freedom will cease if she adopts violent means, for their fruit will not be freedom but slavery in disguise.

If as a member of a slave nation I could deliver the suppressed classes from their slavery without freeing myself from my own, I would do so today. But it is an impossible task.

Negro Slavery is an evil of Colossal magnitude and I am utterly averse to the admission of Slavery into the Missouri Territories.

Every measure of prudence, therefore, ought to be assumed for the eventual total extirpation of slavery from the United States ... I have, throughout my whole life, held the practice of slavery in ... abhorrence.

Negro slavery is an evil of colossal magnitude.

Slavery is a foul contagion in the human character.

He who does not prefer exile to slavery is not free by any measure of freedom, truth and duty.

It is slavery to live in the mind unless it has become part of the body

Love that does not renew itself every day becomes a habit and in turn a slavery.