Slavery Quotes

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Wherever slavery is, it has been first introduced without law. The oldest laws we find concerning it, are not laws introducing it; but regulating it, as an already existing thing.

Abraham Lincoln

I don't deserve a share in governing a hen-roost, much less a nation. Nor do most people — all the people who believe advertisements, and think in catchwords and spread rumors. The real reason for democracy is just the reverse. Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows. 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.

Slavery is now no where more patiently endured, than in countries once inhabited by the zealots of liberty.

The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in those colonies, where it was unhappily introduced in their infant state.

Thomas Jefferson

I'm feeling honored that I am being chosen as a Nobel laureate and I have been honored with this – this precious award, the Nobel Peace Prize. And I'm proud that I'm the first Pakistani and the first young woman or the first young person who is getting this award. It's a great honor for me. And I'm also really happy that I'm sharing this award with a person – with a person from India whose name is Kailash Satyarthi and his great work for child's right, his great work against – against child slavery.

Malala Yousafzai

Abusive language and swearing are a legacy of slavery, humiliation, and disrespect for human dignity, one's own and that of other people.

As long as the mind is enslaved, the body can never be free. Psychological freedom, a firm sense of self-esteem, is the most powerful weapon against the long night of physical slavery.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Slavery is wrong in its effect upon white people and free labor; it is the only thing that threatens the Union. It makes what Senator Seward has been much abused for calling an 'irrepressible conflict'. When they get ready to settle it, we hope they will let us know. Public opinion settles every question here, any policy to be permanent must have public opinion at the bottom, something in accordance with the philosophy of the human mind as it is. The property basis will have its weight. The love of property and a consciousness of right or wrong have conflicting places in our organization, which often make a man's course seem crooks, his conduct a riddle.

Abraham Lincoln

Resolutions upon the subject of domestic slavery having passed both branches of the General Assembly at its present session, the undersigned hereby protest against the passage of the same.

Abraham Lincoln

One section of our country believes slavery is right, and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong, and ought not to be extended.

Abraham Lincoln

In the way our Fathers originally left the slavery question, the institution was in the course of ultimate extinction, and the public mind rested in the belief that it was in the course of ultimate extinction.... All I have asked or desired anywhere, is that it should be placed back again upon the basis that the Fathers of our government originally placed it upon.

Abraham Lincoln

In the United States of North America, every independent movement of the workers was paralysed so long as slavery disfigured a part of the Republic. Labour cannot emancipate itself in the white skin where in the black it is branded.

I think we must get rid of slavery or we must get rid of freedom.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our government, National and State, must be freed from the sinister influence or control of special interests. Exactly as the special interests of cotton and slavery threatened our political integrity before the Civil War, so now the great special business interests too often control and corrupt the men and methods of government for their own profit. We must drive the special interests out of politics.

Theodore Roosevelt

Wide-sounding Zeus takes away half a man's worth on the day when slavery comes upon him.

I know there is a God, and that He hates injustice and slavery. I see the storm coming, and I know that his hand is in it. If He has a place and work for me - and I think He has - I believe I am ready.

Abraham Lincoln

You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress of humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step toward the diminution of war, every step toward better treatment of the colored races, or even mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world. I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.

Bertrand Russell

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

Slavery is no scholar, no improver; it does not love the whistle of the railroad; it does not love the newspaper, the mailbag, a college, a book or a preacher who has the absurd whim of saying what he thinks; it does not increase the white population; it does not improve the soil; everything goes to decay.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I have watched how steadily the general feeling, as shown at elections, has been rising against Slavery. What a proud thing for England if she is the first European nation which utterly abolishes it! I was told before leaving England that after living in slave countries all my opinions would be altered; the only alteration I am aware of is forming a much higher estimate of the negro character.

Beshrew that heart that makes my heart to groan For that deep wound it gives my friend and me; Is't not enough to torture me alone, But slave to slavery my sweet'st friend must be?...

William Shakespeare

I think in this phase, after the Negro emerges in and from the desegregated society, then a great deal of time must be spent in improving standards which lag behind to a large extent because of segregation,discrimination, and the legacy of slavery.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Freedom and slavery, the one is the name of virtue, and the other of vice, and both are acts of the will.

Your ancestors dragged these black people from their homes by force; and in the white man's quest for wealth and an easy life they have been ruthlessly suppressed and exploited, degraded into slavery. The modern prejudice against Negroes is the result of the desire to maintain this unworthy condition.

Albert Einstein