Abolitionist Quotes

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Harriet Tubman

John Brown (abolitionist)

Sojourner Truth

Elizabeth Blackwell

Julia Ward Howe

Thomas Clarkson

Our nerves and sinews, our tears and blood have been sacrificed on the altar of this nation's avarice. Our unpaid labor has been a stepping-stone to its financial success. Some of its dividends must surely be ours.

Sojourner Truth

When this boy was brought to Dr. Young, his name being William, the same as mine, my mother was ordered to change mine to something else. This, at the time, I thought to be one of the most cruel acts that could be committed upon my rights.

William Wells Brown

It has been suggested that an account of my life and fortunes would not be uninteresting to the public,

Solomon Northup

The only ground on which a neutral State can claim respect at the hands of belligerents is, that, so far as she is concerned, their rights are protected.

The most stupendous system of organized robbery known has been that of the church towards woman, a robbery that has not only taken her self-respect but all rights of person; the fruits of her own industry; her opportunities of education; the exercise of her judgment, her own conscience, her own will.

Matilda Joslyn Gage

A man is none the less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years. Neither are a people any the less slaves because permitted periodically to choose new masters.

Lysander Spooner

Self-reliance Is the Fine Road to Independence.

When a vessel arrived to conduct us away to the ship, it was a most horrible scene; there was nothing to be heard but rattling of chains, smacking of whips, and the groans and cries of our fellow men.... All my help was cries and tears and these could not avail.

Ottobah Cugoano

Certainly, great injustice is done to a people who are excluded on account of a complexion which they did not give themselves.

J. Sella Martin

I declare, it does appear to me, as though some nations think God is asleep, or that he made the Africans for nothing else but to dig their mines and work their farms, or they cannot believe history, sacred or profane.

David Walker (abolitionist)

When you make men slaves you deprive them of half their virtue, you set them, in your own conduct, an example of fraud, rapine, and cruelty, and compel them to live with you in a state of war.

Olaudah Equiano

Irony is jesting hidden behind gravity. Humor is gravity concealed behind the jest.

I grew up like a neglected weed—ignorant of liberty, having no experience of it.

But now, instead of discussion and argument, brute force rises up to the rescue of discomfited error, and crushes truth and right into the dust. "Might makes right," and hoary folly totters on in her mad career escorted by armies and navies.

I considered that life was sweet in all living creatures, and the taking it away became a very tender point with me. The creatures, or many of them, were given, or as I take it, rather lent us to be governed in the great Creator's fear.

Joshua Evans (Quaker minister)

Slaves, of any color, becoming free in countries where their own race are in bondage, show as much if not more eagerness (when they possess the means) to become masters, than such as are born free. And their treatment of their slaves is generally more cruel.

Theodore S. Wright

We implore thy blessing, O God, upon the President, and all who are in authority in the United States. Direct them by thy wisdom, in all their deliberations, and O save thy people from the calamities of war.

The joy resulting from the diffusion of blessings to all around us is the purest and sublimest that can ever enter the human mind, and can be conceived only by those who have experienced it. Next to the consolations of divine grace, it is the most sovereign balm to the miseries of life, both in him who is the object of it, and in him who exercises it.

No class is safe unless government is so arranged that each class has in its hands the means of protecting itself. That is the idea of republics.

Wendell Phillips

Justice is the idea of God, the ideal of man, the rule of conduct writ in the nature of mankind.

Theodore Parker

In Virgil's account of the good housewife, who rises early in order to measure out the work of the household, and in Solomon's description of the thrifty woman of his time, one sees the value set upon feminine industry and economy in times far removed from our own.

Julia Ward Howe

One of the duties which devolve upon women in the present interesting crisis, is to prepare themselves for more extensive usefulness, by making use of those religious and literary privileges and advantages that are within their reach, if they will only stretch out their hands and possess them.

But gentlemen, as long as I am an American Citizen, and as long as American blood runs in these veins, I shall hold myself at liberty to speak, to write, and to publish whatever I please on any subject.

Elijah Parish Lovejoy

Complexion can in no sense be construed into crime, much less be rightfully made the criterion of rights.

Charles Lenox Remond

Make people happy and there will not be half the quarreling, or a tenth part of the wickedness there now is.

Lydia Maria Child