Slavery

If there breathe on earth a slave,
Are ye truly free and brave? ~ James Russell Lowell

Slavery is a form of forced labor in which human beings are forcibly held under the involuntary control of others, and required to work under legal penalty. One instance of slavery occurred from the 16th to the 19th centuries, when millions of people were taken from Africa to the Americas to work there.

Quotes

What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! Who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment and death itself in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment, be deaf to all those motives whose powers supported him through his trial, and inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Slavery is essentially barbarous in its character. It, above all things else, dreads the presence of an advanced civilization. It flourishes best where it meets no reproving frowns, and hears no condemning voices. ~ Frederick Douglass

There can be no fanatics in the cause of genuine liberty. Fanaticism is excessive zeal. There may be, and have been fanatics in false religion; in the bloody religions of the heathen. There are fanatics in superstition. But there can be no fanatic, however warm their zeal, in the true religion, even although you sell your goods and bestow your money on the poor, and go on and follow your Master. There may, and every hour shows around me, fanatics in the cause of false liberty – that infamous liberty which justifies human bondage, that liberty whose 'corner-stone is slavery'. ~ Thaddeus Stevens

There is no substitute for a militant freedom. The only alternative is submission and slavery. ~ Calvin Coolidge

The sin of slavery is one of which it may be said that without the shedding of blood there is no remission. ~ James A. Garfield

There must doubtless be an unhappy influence on the manners of our people produced by the existence of slavery among us. The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other.  Our children see this, and learn to imitate it; for man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in him. ~ Thomas Jefferson

It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. ~ Abraham Lincoln

Man is free; yet we must not suppose that he is at liberty to do everything he pleases, for he becomes a slave the moment he allows his actions to be ruled by passion. The man who has sufficient power over himself to wait until his nature has recovered its even balance is the truly wise man, but such beings are seldom met with. ~ Giacomo Casanova

No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck. ~ Frederick Douglass

The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that men may become robots. ~ Erich Fromm

The good man, though a slave, is free; the wicked, though he reigns, is a slave... ~ Augustine of Hippo

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Without self knowledge, without understanding the working and functions of his machine, man cannot be free, he cannot govern himself and he will always remain a slave. ~ G. I. Gurdjieff

Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature — opposition to it, in his love of justice. ~ Abraham Lincoln

You mean the whites are intellectually the superiors of the blacks, and, therefore have the right to enslave them? Take care again. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with an intellect superior to your own. ~ Abraham Lincoln

This is a world of compensation; and he would be no slave must consent to have no slaves. Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it. ~ Abraham Lincoln

If there breathe on earth a slave,
Are ye truly free and brave?
If ye do not feel the chain,
When it works a brother's pain,
Are ye not base slaves indeed,
Slaves unworthy to be freed? ~ James Russell Lowell

If there breathe on earth a slave,
Are ye truly free and brave?
If ye do not feel the chain,
When it works a brother's pain,
Are ye not base slaves indeed,
Slaves unworthy to be freed? ~ James Russell Lowell

File:John Brown Painting.jpg

They are slaves who fear to speak
For the fallen and the weak;
[...]
They are slaves who dare not be
In the right with two or three. ~ James Russell Lowell

Man is not free to watch impassively the enslavement and dishonor of men, nor their struggles for liberty and honor. ~ José Martí

When a man, desperate for work, finds himself in a factory or on a fishing boat or in a field, working, toiling, for little or no pay, and beaten if he tries to escape -- that is slavery. When a woman is locked in a sweatshop, or trapped in a home as a domestic servant, alone and abused and incapable of leaving -- that’s slavery. When a little boy is kidnapped, turned into a child soldier, forced to kill or be killed -- that’s slavery. When a little girl is sold by her impoverished family [...] runs away from home, or is lured by the false promises of a better life, and then imprisoned in a brothel and tortured if she resists -- that’s slavery. It is barbaric, and it is evil, and it has no place in a civilized world. ~ Barack Obama

For the prime design of society is the extension of the operation of law, and the equal treatment and protection of the citizens. Slavery, therefore, being the negation of law, cannot arise from law, or be compatible with it. As far as slavery prevails in any community, so far must that community be defective in answering the purposes of society. ~ Rev. James Ramsay

Slavery is an unnatural state of opression on the one side, and of suffering on the other; and needs only to be laid open or exposed in its native colours, to command the abhorrence and opposition of every man of feeling and sentiment. ~ Rev. James Ramsay

I shall choose friends among men, but neither slaves nor masters. And I shall choose only such as please me, and them I shall love and respect, but neither command nor obey. And we shall join our hands when we wish, or walk alone when we so desire. ~ Ayn Rand

You cannot make soldiers of slaves, nor slaves of soldiers. ~ Howell Cobb

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If slaves make good soldiers our whole theory of slavery is wrong. ~ Howell Cobb

Although they may be poor, not a man shall be a slave. ~ George Frederick Root

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If slavery, barbarism and desolation are to be called peace, men can have no worse misfortune. ~ Baruch Spinoza

If any should be slaves, it should be first those who desire it for themselves, and secondly, those who desire it for others. ~ Abraham Lincoln

The magnificence of the courage and fortitude of the Korean people defies description. They have chosen to risk death rather than slavery. ~ Douglas MacArthur

To Americans, that some desperate wretches should be willing to steal and enslave men by violence and murder for gain, is rather lamentable. ~ Thomas Paine

In any country, regardless of what its laws say, wherever people act upon the idea that the disadvantage of one man is the good of another, there slavery exists. ~ Booker T. Washington

Of all forms of slavery there is none that is so harmful and degrading as that form of slavery which tempts one human being to hate another by reason of his race or color. ~ Booker T. Washington

The only difference as compared with the old, outspoken slavery is this, that the worker of today seems to be free because he is not sold once for all, but piecemeal by the day, the week, the year, and because no one owner sells him to another, but he is forced to sell himself in this way instead, being the slave of no particular person, but of the whole property-holding class. ~ Friedrich Engels

• Every measure of prudence, therefore, ought to be assumed for the eventual total extirpation of slavery.
  • John Adams, as quoted in letter to Robert J. Evans (8 June 1819).

• I did more for the Russian serf in giving him land as well as personal liberty, than America did for the negro slave set free by the proclamation of President Lincoln. I am at a loss to understand how you Americans could have been so blind as to leave the negro slave without tools to work out his salvation. In giving him personal liberty, you have him an obligation to perform to the state which he must be unable to fulfill. Without property of any kind he cannot educate himself and his children. I believe the time must come when many will question the manner of American emancipation of the negro slaves in 1863. The vote, in the hands of an ignorant man, without either property or self respect, will be used to the damage of the people at large; for the rich man, without honor or any kind of patriotism, will purchase it, and with it swamp the rights of a free people.
  • Alexander II, emperor of Russia, conversation with Wharton Barker, Pavlovski Palace (August 17, 1879); reported in Barker, "The Secret of Russia's Friendship", The Independent (March 24, 1904), p. 647.

• The dominion of bad men is hurtful chiefly to themselves who rule, for they destroy their own souls by greater license in wickedness; while those who are put under them in service are not hurt except by their own iniquity. For to the just all the evils imposed on them by unjust rulers are not the punishment of crime, but the test of virtue. Therefore the good man, although he is a slave, is free; but the bad man, even if he reigns, is a slave, and that not of one man, but, what is far more grievous, of as many masters as he has vices; of which vices when the divine Scripture treats, it says, “For of whom any man is overcome, to the same he is also the bond-slave.”
  • Augustine of Hippo, The City of God (early 400s), IV, 3
  • Variant translation: 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.

• Whoever steals a man and sells him, and anyone found in possession of him, shall be put to death.
  • The Bible, Exodus 21:16, ESV.

• Is not this the fast that I have chosen: to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?
  • The Bible, Isaiah 58:6, 21st Century King James Version (KJ21)
  • The boldened passage was used by U.S. President John F. Kennedy in his inaugural address.

• In the United States one cannot sell himself as a peon or slave -- the law is fixed and established to protect the weak-minded, the poor, the miserable. Men will sometimes sell themselves for a meal of victuals or contract with another who acts as surety on his [sic] bond to work out the amount of the bond upon his [sic] release from jail. Any such contract is positively null and void and the procuring and causing of such contract to be made violates these statutes.
  • Attorney General Francis Biddle (1941). "Circular No. 3591, Re: Involuntary Servitude, Slavery, and Peonage." Francis Biddle to All United States Attorneys, Dec. 12, 1941, File 50-821, Record Group 60, Department of Justice, National Archives.

• Personally I believe the bicentenary offers us a chance not just to say how profoundly shameful the slave trade was – how we condemn its existence utterly and praise those who fought for its abolition, but also to express our deep sorrow that it ever happened, that it ever could have happened and to rejoice at the different and better times we live in today.
  • Tony Blair, in a statement to New Nation (27 November 2006)

• Slavery, throughout its entire existence in the United States, is none other than the most barbarous, unprovoked and unjustifiable war of one portion of its citizens against another portion, the only conditions of which are perpetual imprisonment and hopeless servitude, or absolute extermination, in utter disregard and violation of those eternal and self-evident truths set forth in our Declaration of Independence.
  • John Brown, "Provisional Constitution and Ordinances" (1858).

• Scripture points out this difference between believers and unbelievers; the latter, as old slaves of their incurable perversity, cannot endure the rod; but the former, like children of noble birth, profit by repentance and correction.
  • John Calvin Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life, pg. 57

• 'Man is free; yet we must not suppose that he is at liberty to do everything he pleases, for he becomes a slave the moment he allows his actions to be ruled by passion. The man who has sufficient power over himself to wait until his nature has recovered its even balance is the truly wise man, but such beings are seldom met with.
  • Giacomo Casanova, Memoirs of J. Casanova de Seingalt (1894).

• For, what is slavery?  It is the complete and absolute subjection of one person to the control and disposal of another person, by legalized force.  We need not argue that no person can be, rightfully, compelled to submit to such control and disposal.  All such subjection must originate in force; and, private force not being strong enough to accomplish the purpose, public force, in the form of law, must lend its aid.  The Government comes to the help of the individual slaveholder, and punishes resistance to his will, and compels submission.  THE GOVERNMENT, therefore, in the case of every individual slave, is THE REAL ENSLAVER, depriving each person enslaved of all liberty and all property, and all that makes life dear, without imputation of crime or any legal process whatsoever.  This is precisely what the Government of the United States is forbidden to do by the Constitution.  The Government of the United States, therefore, cannot create or continue the relation of master and slave.  Nor can that relation be created or continued in any place, district, or territory, over which the jurisdiction of the National Government is exclusive; for slavery cannot subsist a moment after the support of the public force has been withdrawn.
  • Salmon P. Chase, “The Address of the Southern and Western Liberty Convention”, in Anti-slavery Addresses of 1844 and 1845 by Salmon Portland Chase and Charles Dexter Cleveland, ed. C. D. C. (London: Sampson Low, Son, and Martson, 1867), pp. 75–125.

• The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.
  • Winston Churchill, The River War: An Historical Account of the Reconquest of the Soudan (1899), Volume II, p. 249.

• The proposition to make soldiers of our slaves is the most pernicious idea that has been suggested since the war began. It is to me a source of deep mortification and regret to see the name of that good and great man and soldier, General R. E. Lee, given as authority for such a policy. My first hour of despondency will be the one in which that policy shall be adopted. You cannot make soldiers of slaves, nor slaves of soldiers. The moment you resort to negro soldiers your white soldiers will be lost to you; and one secret of the favor with which the proposition is received in portions of the army is the hope that when negroes go into the Army they will be permitted to retire. It is simply a proposition to fight the balance of the war with negro troops. You can't keep white and black troops together, and you can't trust negroes by themselves. It is difficult to get negroes enough for the purpose indicated in the President's message, much less enough for an Army. Use all the negroes you can get, for all the purposes for which you need them, but don't arm them. The day you make soldiers of them is the beginning of the end of the revolution. If slaves make good soldiers our whole theory of slavery is wrong. But they won't make soldiers. As a class they are wanting in every qualification of a soldier. Better by far to yield to the demands of England and France and abolish slavery and thereby purchase their aid, than resort to this policy, which leads as certainly to ruin and subjugation as it is adopted; you want more soldiers, and hence the proposition to take negroes into the Army. Before resorting to it, at least try every reasonable mode of getting white soldiers. I do not entertain a doubt that you can, by the volunteering policy, get more men into the service than you can arm. I have more fears about arms than about men, For Heaven’s sake, try it before you fill with gloom and despondency the hearts of many of our truest and most devoted men, by resort to the suicidal policy of arming our slaves.
  • Howell Cobb, regarding suggestions that the Confederates turn their slaves into soldiers (1865). As quoted in Encyclopædia Britannica (1911), Hugh Chisholm, editor, 11th ed., Cambridge University Press. Also quoted as 'You cannot make soldiers of slaves, or slaves of soldiers. The day you make a soldier of them is the beginning of the end of the Revolution. And if slaves seem good soldiers, then our whole theory of slavery is wrong'.

• There is no substitute for a militant freedom. The only alternative is submission and slavery.
  • Calvin Coolidge, The Price of Freedom: Speeches and Addresses, Coolidge, The Minerva Group (2001), p. 159
  • Acceptance of the Memorial to General Ulysses S. Grant (27 April 1922).

• I would not have a slave to till my ground,
  To carry me, to fan me while I sleep,
  And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth
  That sinews bought and sold have ever earn'd.
  • William Cowper, in The Task (1785), Book II, line 29.

• Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs
  Receive our air, that moment they are free;
  They touch our country, and their shackles fall.
  • William Cowper, in The Task (1785), Book II, line 40, The Timepiece.

• As to the doctrine of slavery and the right of Christians to hold Africans in perpetual servitude, and sell and treat them as we do our horses and cattle, that, it is true, has been heretofore countenanced by the Province Laws formerly, but nowhere is it expressly enacted or established. It has been a usage–a usage which took its origin from the practice of some of the European nations, and the regulations of British government respecting the then-colonies, for the benefit of trade and wealth. But whatever sentiments have formerly prevailed in this particular or slid in upon us by the example of others, a different idea has taken place with the people of America, more favorable to the natural rights of mankind, and to that natural, innate desire of liberty, with which Heaven, without regard to color, complexion, or shape of noses-features, has inspired all the human race. And upon this ground our constitution of government, by which the people of this Commonwealth have solemnly bound themselves, sets out with declaring that all men are born free and equal, and that every subject is entitled to liberty, and to have it guarded by the laws, as well as life and property–and in short is totally repugnant to the idea of being born slaves. This being the case, I think the idea of slavery is inconsistent with our own conduct and constitution; and there can be no such thing as perpetual servitude of a rational creature, unless his liberty is forfeited by some criminal conduct or given up by personal consent or contract.
  • William Cushing, as quoted in Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. Jennison (1783).

• We have got to choose between two results. With these four millions of Negroes, either you must have four millions of disfranchised, disarmed, untaught, landless, thriftless, non-producing, non-consuming, degraded men, or else you must have four millions of land-holding, industrious, arms-bearing, and voting population. Choose between the two! Which will you have?
  • Richard Henry Dana, Jr., as quoted in Religion, Race, and Reconstruction: The Public School in the Politics of the 1870s (1998), by Ward M. McCafee, Albany, New York: State University of New York, p. 11.

• The middle of the fourth millennium B.C. is the period at which Neolithic society in the great eastern river valleys developed the first form of civilization. ...For understanding how the impressive technological achievements of the early civilizations were brought about, it is important to notice that, even when the tiller of the soil was regarded as a free man rather than as a serf, forced labor on public works was commonly exacted (in Egypt it was still customary when de Lesseps began to dig the Suez Canal)... we may trace from this period the growth of slavery, which had its origin at the stage when it first paid to keep captives alive because their work was worth more than their keep. Every war produced its quota of human plunder; traders, too, dealt rapidly in a commodity that could carry itself to market; and within the community enslavement was commonly the fate of the criminal and the debtor. Slaves of the god or of his temple and of the king or of his state provided a numerous body of workers, sometimes well trained and often cruelly exploited, while throughout ancient history almost every reference to agriculture or industry in civilized countries must be taken to imply the employment of slaves, usually in small numbers, alongside farmers and craftsmen enjoying different degrees of personal freedom.
  • T. K. Derry & Trevor I. Williams, A Short History of Technology: From the Earliest Times to A.D. 1900 (1960) Ch.1 General Historical Survey; "Mesopotamian and Egyptian Civilizations"

• How great was the temptation to use... slaves of the state as easily expendable pioneers may perhaps be judged by the fact that in an age of machinery prisoners of war have been worked to death in railway building, in Europe as well as Asia. Secondly, the city of Rome under the early empire, with perhaps 200,000 slaves in a total population of less than a million, is an outstanding instance... for example, 660 slaves maintained the 280 miles of aqueducts which gave a daily water supply of 38 gallons a head. Finally, there was the exploitation of slave labour in mining, which was used to enrich the kingdom of David and Solomon as well as the fifth-century Athenian democracy and spread as far west as Roman Spain: this won the metals, on which technical progress largely depended, by methods that stretched manpower to exhaustion. We lack the details, but Diodorus Siculus in the reign of Augustus writes that in the Spanish silver-mines the strongest workers were the most unfortunate, because they were the slowest to die.
  • T. K. Derry & Trevor I. Williams, A Short History of Technology: From the Earliest Times to A.D. 1900 (1960) Ch.5, Building Construction, "Man and Animal Power

• Plato defined a slave as one who accepts from another the purposes which control his conduct. This condition obtains even where there is no slavery in the legal sense. It is found wherever men are engaged in activity which is socially serviceable, but whose service they do not understand and have no personal interest in.
  • John Dewey, in Democracy and Education (1916), Section 7: The Democratic Conception in Education.

• Once Diogenes, who was washing vegetables, ridiculed him as he passed by, and said, "If you had learnt to eat these vegetables, you would not have been a slave in the palace of a tyrant." But Aristippus replied, "And you, if you had known how to behave among men, would not have been washing vegetables."
  • Diogenes Laertius Aristippus, 4.

• When some one boasted that at the Pythian games he had vanquished men, Diogenes replied, "Nay, I defeat men, you defeat slaves."
  • Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 33, 43

• To Xeniades, who had purchased Diogenes at the slave market, he said, "Come, see that you obey orders."
  • Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 36

• When the slave auctioneer asked in what he was proficient, he replied, "In ruling people."
  • Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 74

• I didn't know I was a slave until I found out I couldn't do the things I wanted.
  • Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845).

• I have often been utterly astonished, since I came to the north, to find persons who could speak of the singing, among slaves, as evidence of their contentment and happiness. It is impossible to conceive of a greater mistake. Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears. At least, such is my experience. I have often sung to drown my sorrow, but seldom to express my happiness. Crying for joy, and singing for joy, were alike uncommon to me while in the jaws of slavery. The singing of a man cast away upon a desolate island might be as appropriately considered as evidence of contentment and happiness, as the singing of a slave; the songs of the one and of the other are prompted by the same emotion.
  • Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845).

• I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and incur my own abhorrence. From my earliest recollection, I date the entertainment of a deep conviction that slavery would not always be able to hold me within its foul embrace; and in the darkest hours of my career in slavery, this living word of faith and spirit of hope departed not from me, but remained like ministering angels to cheer me through the gloom. This good spirit was from God, and to him I offer thanksgiving and praise.
  • Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845).

• Slavery is essentially barbarous in its character. It, above all things else, dreads the presence of an advanced civilization. It flourishes best where it meets no reproving frowns, and hears no condemning voices.
  • Frederick Douglass, The Constitution of the United States: Is It Pro-Slavery or Anti-Slavery? (26 March 1860), by F. Douglass. Glasgow, United Kingdom.

• No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.
  • Frederick Douglass, Speech at Civil Rights Mass Meeting, Washington, D.C. (22 October 1883).

• Slavery was the wickedest thing in the world, the greatest curse the earth had ever felt... The sin of slavery is so clearly written out, and so much talked against, that if any one says he don't know, and has not heard, he must, I think, be a liar.
  • John Dumont (1849), a former slaveholder and former master of Sojourner Truth. As quoted in Olive Gilbert & Sojourner Truth (1878), Narrative of Sojourner Truth, a Bondswoman of Olden Time, page 124

• Slavery is disheartening; but Nature is not so helpless but it can rid itself of every last wrong. But the spasms of nature are centuries and ages and will tax the faith of shortlived men. Slowly, slowly the Avenger comes, but comes surely. The proverbs of the nations affirm these delays, but affirm the arrival. They say, "God may consent, but not forever." The delay of the Divine Justice — this was the meaning and soul of the Greek Tragedy, — this was the soul of their religion.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson, in "The Fugitive Slave Law" , Lecture in New York City (7 March 1854), The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1904), p. 238.

• I do not see how a barbarous community and a civilized community can constitute a state. I think we must get rid of slavery or we must get rid of freedom.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Assault upon Mr. Sumner's Speech (May 26, 1856).

• The only difference as compared with the old, outspoken slavery is this, that the worker of today seems to be free because he is not sold once for all, but piecemeal by the day, the week, the year, and because no one owner sells him to another, but he is forced to sell himself in this way instead, being the slave of no particular person, but of the whole property-holding class.
  • Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844.

• But this is slavery, not to speak one's thought.
  • Euripides, The Phoenician Women, line 392; reported in David Grene and Richmond Lattimore, eds., The Complete Greek Tragedies (1958), vol. 4, p. 392.

• Every man of the commonalty (excepting infants, insane persons, and criminals) is, of common right, and by the laws of God, a freeman, and entitled to the free enjoyment of liberty. ...liberty or freedom consists in having an actual share in the appointment of those who are to frame the laws and who are to be the guardians of every man's life, property, and peace. For the all of one man is as dear to him as the all of another; and the poor man has an equal right, but more need to have representatives in the Legislature than the rich one. ...they who have no voice or vote in the electing of representatives, do not enjoy liberty, but are absolutely enslaved to those who have votes and their representatives; for to be enslaved is to have governors whom other men have set over us, and to be subject to laws made by the representatives of others, without having had representatives of our own to give consent in our behalf.
  • Benjamin Franklin, "Some Good Whig Principles. Declaration of those Rights of the Community of Great Britain, without which they cannot be Free," as quoted in Memoirs of the Llife and Writings of Benjamin Franklin (1818) by Benjamin Franklin & William Temple Franklin

• In the 19th century inhumanity meant cruelty; in the 20th century it means schizoid self-alienation. The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that men may become robots. True enough, robots do not rebel. But given man’s nature, robots cannot live and remain sane, they become "Golems”; they will destroy their world and themselves because they cannot stand any longer the boredom of a meaningless life.
  • Erich Fromm, The Sane Society (1955), Ch. 9: Summary — Conclusion, p. 102
  • Fromm is here referencing a statement made by Adlai Stevenson at Columbia University in 1954, which he had quoted earlier in the work: "We are not in danger of becoming slaves any more, but of becoming robots.”

• But on the other hand we must remember, as the point that was made, is that the church is very loose on moral evils, because although they try to accuse people like me, who believe in empiricism and the Enlightenment, of somehow what they call moral relativism, as if it’s some appalling sin, where what it actually means is thought, they for example thought that slavery was perfectly fine, absolutely okay, and then they didn’t. And what is the point of the Catholic church if it says ‘oh, well we couldn’t know better because nobody else did,’ then what are you for?
  • Stephen Fry Intelligence² Catholic church debate: Transcript

• The sin of slavery is one of which it may be said that without the shedding of blood there is no remission.
  • James A. Garfield, diary entry (8 June 1881).

• If one looks across the expanse of history, one cannot help but notice a curious sense of identification between the most exalted and the most degraded; particularly, between emperors and kings, and slaves. Many kings have surrounded themselves with slaves, appoint slave ministers-there have even been, as with the Mamluks of Egypt, actual dynasties of slaves. Kings surround themselves with slaves for the same reason they surround themselves with eunuchs: because the slaves and criminals have no families or friends, no possibility of other loyalties-or at least that, in principle, they shouldn't. But in a way, kings should really be like that too. As many an African proverb emphasizes: a proper king has no relatives either, or at least, he acts as if he does not. In other words, the king and slave are mirror images, in that unlike normal human beings who are defined by their commitments to others, they are defined only by relations of power. They are as close to perfectly isolated, alienated beings as one can possibly become.
  • David Graeber, Debt: The First 5000 Years (2011).

• As soon as slavery fired upon the flag it was felt, we all felt, even those who did not object to slaves, that slavery must be destroyed. We felt that it was a stain to the Union that men should be bought and sold like cattle.
  • Ulysses S. Grant, to Otto von Bismarck (June 1878), as quoted in Around the World with General Grant (1879).

• It is with regret that I have again to announce a continuance of the disturbed condition of the island of Cuba. No advance toward the pacification of the discontented part of the population has been made. While the insurrection has gained no advantages and exhibits no more of the elements of power or of the prospects of ultimate success than were exhibited a year ago, Spain, on the other hand, has not succeeded in its repression, and the parties stand apparently in the same relative attitude which they have occupied for a long time past. This contest has lasted now for more than four years. Were its scene at a distance from our neighborhood, we might be indifferent to its result, although humanity could not be unmoved by many of its incidents wherever they might occur. It is, however, at our door. I can not doubt that the continued maintenance of slavery in Cuba is among the strongest inducements to the continuance of this strife. A terrible wrong is the natural cause of a terrible evil.
  • Ulysses S. Grant, Fourth State of the Union Address (2 December 1872).

• Slavery in Cuba is a principal cause of the lamentable condition of the island.
  • Ulysses S. Grant, Fifth State of the Union Address (1 December 1873).

• Did not Jesus condemn slavery? Let us examine some of his precepts. "Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them", Let every slaveholder apply these queries to his own heart; Am I willing to be a slave —Am I willing to see my wife the slave of another — Am I willing to see my mother a slave, or my father, my sister or my brother? If not, then in holding others as slaves, I am doing what I would not wish to be done to me or any relative I have; and thus have I broken this golden rule which was given me to walk by".
  • Angelina Grimké, Christian abolitionist and activist. Appeal to the Christian Women of the South (1836), American Anti-Slavery Society.

• None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Elective Affinities (1809), Bk. II, Ch. 5.

• Without self knowledge, without understanding the working and functions of his machine, man cannot be free, he cannot govern himself and he will always remain a slave.
  • G. I. Gurdjieff, Quotations of Gurdjieff from In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching (1949) by P. D. Ouspensky

• Shall the prejudices and paralysis of slavery continue to hang upon the skirts of progress? How long will those who rejoice that slavery no longer exists cherish or tolerate the incapacities it put upon their communities?
  • Benjamin Harrison, Benjamin Harrison's First State of the Union Address (3 December 1889).

• The colored people did not intrude themselves upon us. They were brought here in chains and held in the communities where they are now chiefly found by a cruel slave code. Happily for both races, they are now free.
  • Benjamin Harrison, Benjamin Harrison's First State of the Union Address (3 December 1889).

• Are we disposed to be the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, I consider it as nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery; and in proportion to the magnitude of the subject ought to be the freedom of the debate. It is only in this way that we can hope to arrive at truth, and fulfill the great responsibility which we hold to God and our country.
  • Patrick Henry, "Give me liberty or give me death!" (1775).

• Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
  • Patrick Henry, "Give me liberty or give me death!" (1775).

• Slavery came to the English colonies in North America in the seventeenth century because the colonists found themselves in possession of a vast continent, needing only cultivation to make it the homes of millions of free, prosperous, God-fearing human beings. Those who came from Europe would be refugees from the tyranny and oppression of feudalism, divine right monarchy, and religious intolerance. But converting this vast wilderness into cultivated lands required labor. It was nearly inevitable that someone would turn to tribal Africa for some, at least, of this labor. It is paradoxical but true that a large measure of the labor that turned America into a sanctuary for freedom came from slavery. The slave trade that developed between North America and the west coast of Africa is one of the great horror stories of western civilization. It resulted also from the unlimited greed of the African chiefs who enslaved their brother Africans, and then sold them to white slave traders. They in turn sold them, for vast profits, into the new world. The events of this story are morally indefensible.
  • Harry V. Jaffa, "Slavery and the Human Story" (2008), by H.V. Jaffa, God Bless America (18 April 2008), The Claremont Institute.

• I can understand the poor and stupid voting for Marxism or one of its fashionable variants. If you've no hope of being other than a slave, you may as well opt for the most efficient form of slavery.
  • P. D. James, in A Taste for Death (1986), p. 412.

• There must doubtless be an unhappy influence on the manners of our people produced by the existence of slavery among us. The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other.  Our children see this, and learn to imitate it; for man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in him.
  • Thomas Jefferson, as quoted in Notes on the State of Virginia (1785), Query XVIII.

• What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! Who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment and death itself in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment, be deaf to all those motives whose powers supported him through his trial, and inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose.
  • Thomas Jefferson, letter to Jean Nicholas Demeunier (24 January 1786) Bergh 17:103.

̈*The Greeks used the slaves, with which their frequent wars supplied them, in all kinds of menial and laborious occupations, and a notion that such occupations could not be filled without slaves, became so familiar, that even their acutest philosophers seem never to have doubted its accuracy or justice. A commonwealth, says Aristotle, consists of families, and a family to be complete must consist of freemen and slaves, and in fixing on the form of government, which according to him would be most perfect, and conduce the most to the happiness of mankind, he requires that his territory should be cultivated by slaves of different races and destitute of spirit, that so they may be useful for labor, and that the absence of any disposition to revolt may be securely relied on. 2 The condition of Africa is now in this particular, much like that of Greece then. One of the late travellers was explaining to an African chief that there are no slaves in England. "No slaves," exclaimed their auditor, "then what do you do "for servants?"

• • Richard Jones, Peasant rents : being the first half of an essay on the distribution of wealth and on the sources of taxation (1831), pp. 68-69

• It is to meekness that Christ summons his followers: Learn from me, for I am meek and lowly of heart. Yes, he was meek. He did indeed carry lightly the heavy burden that far exceeded the powers of a human being, indeed, of humankind. But when someone, at the same time as he himself is carrying this heaviest burden, has the time and the willingness and sympathy and self-sacrifice to concern himself unceasingly with others, to help others, to heal the sick, to visit the miserable, to rescue the despairing-is he not carrying the burden lightly! He carried the heaviest burden in solicitude, solicitude for fallen humankind; but he carried it so lightly that he did not quench a smoking wick or break a bruised reed. As the prototype was, so also ought the follower to be. Thus, if the one who does not know today what he is going to have tomorrow, if he, in accordance with the Gospel test (since Christ did not come into the world in order to abolish worry about making a living by bringing prosperity), does not worry about tomorrow, then he is indeed carrying the heavy burden lightly. If someone who is born a slave, if he, according to the apostle’s fervent admonition (for Christ did not come in order to abolish slavery, even though that will follow from it) is not concerned about freedom and only if it is offered chooses to be free-then he is carrying the heavy burden lightly.
  • Soren Kierkegaard, 1847 Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, Hong p. 240-242

• 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.
  • Martin Luther King Jr. Keep Moving From This Mountain (1965).

• If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands.
  • Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963).

• I have a dream: that one day, right down in Georgia and Mississippi and Alabama, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to live together as brothers.
  • Martin Luther King Jr., Speech during the Great March on Detroit at Cobo Hall (23 June 1963).

• I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal." I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.
  • Martin Luther King Jr., I Have A Dream (August 28, 1963).

• We've got to stay together and maintain unity. You know, whenever Pharaoh wanted to prolong the period of slavery in Egypt, he had a favorite, favorite formula for doing it. What was that? He kept the slaves fighting among themselves. But whenever the slaves get together, something happens in Pharaoh's court, and he cannot hold the slaves in slavery. When the slaves get together, that's the beginning of getting out of slavery. Now let us maintain unity.
  • Martin Luther King Jr., I've Been to the Mountaintop (1968).

• "When Charles Darwin entered the world 200 years ago, there was one clear and simple answer to the slave's question. All men were men and brothers, because all were descended from Adam. By the time Darwin had reached adulthood, however, opinions around him were growing more equivocal [...] By the mid-19th-century, many influential voices denied that the enslaved African was a brother, and it was broadly taken for granted that as a man, he was of an inferior sort to his white master".
  • Marek Kohn, The Independent 30 January, 2009.

• This is Rupture Farms. They say it's the biggest meat processing plant on Oddworld. I used to work here, well...I was really a slave like all the others.
  • Abe, Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee written by Lorne Lanning

• If A. can prove, however conclusively, that he may, of right, enslave B. Why may not B. snatch the same argument, and prove equally, that he may enslave A? You say A. is white, and B. is black. It is color, then; the lighter, having the right to enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with a fairer skin than your own. You do not mean color exactly? You mean the whites are intellectually the superiors of the blacks, and, therefore have the right to enslave them? Take care again. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with an intellect superior to your own. But, say you, it is a question of interest; and, if you can make it your interest, you have the right to enslave another. Very well. And if he can make it his interest, he has the right to enslave you.
  • Abraham Lincoln, Fragment on slavery (April 1, 1854?). As quoted in Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (1953), Vol. 2, p. 222-223.

• The foregoing history may not be precisely accurate in every particular; but I am sure it is sufficiently so, for all the uses I shall attempt to make of it, and in it, we have before us, the chief material enabling us to correctly judge whether the repeal of the Missouri Compromise is right or wrong.
  I think, and shall try to show, that it is wrong; wrong in its direct effect, letting slavery into Kansas and Nebraska—and wrong in its prospective principle, allowing it to spread to every other part of the wide world, where men can be found inclined to take it.
  This declared indifference, but as I must think, covert real zeal for the spread of slavery, I can not but hate. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world—enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites—causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and especially because it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty—criticising the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no right principle of action but self-interest.
  • Abraham Lincoln, Speech at Peoria, Illinois (1854), Online text Speech at Peoria, Illinois, in Reply to Senator Douglas (16 October 1854); published in The Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln (1894) Vol. 2.

• When the white man governs himself, that is self-government; but when he governs himself and also governs another man, that is more than self-government — that is despotism. If the negro is a man, why then my ancient faith teaches me that "all men are created equal," and that there can be no moral right in connection with one man's making a slave of another.
  • Abraham Lincoln, Speech at Peoria, Illinois (1854), Online text Speech at Peoria, Illinois, in Reply to Senator Douglas (16 October 1854); published in The Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln (1894) Vol. 2.

• Judge Douglas frequently, with bitter irony and sarcasm, paraphrases our argument by saying: "The white people of Nebraska are good enough to govern themselves, but they are not good enough to govern a few miserable negroes!"
  Well! I doubt not that the people of Nebraska are and will continue to be as good as the average of people elsewhere. I do not say the contrary. 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. Our Declaration of Independence says: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."
  I have quoted so much at this time merely to show that, according to our ancient faith, the just powers of governments are derived from the consent of the governed. Now the relation of master and slave is pro tanto a total violation of this principle. The master not only governs the slave without his consent, but he governs him by a set of rules altogether different from those which he prescribes for himself. Allow ALL the governed an equal voice in the government, and that, and that only, is self-government.
  • Abraham Lincoln, Speech at Peoria, Illinois (1854), Online text Speech at Peoria, Illinois, in Reply to Senator Douglas (16 October 1854); published in The Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln (1894) Vol. 2.

• Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature — opposition to it, in his love of justice. These principles are an eternal antagonism; and when brought into collision so fiercely, as slavery extension brings them, shocks, and throes, and convulsions must ceaselessly follow. Repeal the Missouri Compromise — repeal all compromises — repeal the Declaration of Independence — repeal all past history, you still can not repeal human nature. It still will be the abundance of man's heart, that slavery extension is wrong; and out of the abundance of his heart, his mouth will continue to speak.
  • Abraham Lincoln, Speech at Peoria, Illinois (1854), Online text Speech at Peoria, Illinois, in Reply to Senator Douglas (16 October 1854); published in The Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln (1894) Vol. 2.

• Little by little, but steadily as man's march to the grave, we have been giving up the OLD for the NEW faith. Near eighty years ago we began by declaring that all men are created equal; but now from that beginning we have run down to the other declaration, that for SOME men to enslave OTHERS is a “sacred right of self-government.” These principles can not stand together. They are as opposite as God and mammon; and whoever holds to the one, must despise the other.
  • Abraham Lincoln, Speech at Peoria, Illinois (1854), Online text Speech at Peoria, Illinois, in Reply to Senator Douglas (16 October 1854); published in The Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln (1894) Vol. 2.

• The Autocrat of all the Russias will resign his crown, and proclaim his subjects free republicans sooner than will our American masters voluntarily give up their slaves.
  • Abraham Lincoln, letter to George Robertson (15 August 1855).

• If I find a venomous snake lying on the open praire, I seize the first stick and kill him at once. But if that snake is in bed with my children, I must be more cautious. I shall, in striking the snake, also strike the children, or arouse the reptile to bite the children. Slavery is the venomous snake in bed with the children. But if the question is whether to kill it on the prairie or put it in bed with other children, I think we'd kill it!
  • Abraham Lincoln, "Speech at Hartford" (5 March 1860), Evening Press.

• "A house divided against itself cannot stand". I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.
  • Abraham Lincoln, speech (17 June 1858), alluding to the words of Jesus Christ in Matthew 12:25.

• This is a world of compensation; and he would be no slave must consent to have no slaves. Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it.
  • Abraham Lincoln, Letter to H.L. Pierce and others (Springfield, Illinois, April 6, 1859), published in Essential American History: Abraham Lincoln - The Complete Papers and Writings, Biographically Annotated, The Papers and Writings of Abraham Lincoln © 2012, Jazzybee Verlag Jürgen Beck, 86450 Münster, Germany, ISBN: 97838496200103.

• One of the reasons why I am opposed to slavery is just here. What is the true condition of the laborer? I take it that it is best for all to leave each man free to acquire property as fast as he can. Some will get wealthy. I don't believe in a law to prevent a man from getting rich; it would do more harm than good. So while we do not propose any war upon capital, we do wish to allow the humblest man an equal chance to get rich with everybody else. When one starts poor, as most do in the race of life, free society is such that he knows he can better his condition; he knows that there is no fixed condition of labor, for his whole life. I am not ashamed to confess that twenty-five years ago I was a hired laborer, mauling rails, at work on a flat-boat, just what might happen to any poor man's son! I want every man to have the chance, and I believe a black man is entitled to it, in which he can better his condition. When he may look forward and hope to be a hired laborer this year and the next, work for himself afterward, and finally to hire men to work for him! That is the true system.
• Abraham Lincoln, "Allow the humblest man an equal chance" speech (6 March 1860) at New Haven, Connecticut.

• In giving freedom to the slave we assure freedom to the free; honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve.
  • Abraham Lincoln, Annual Message to the U.S. Congress (1 December 1862).

• 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. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes.
  • Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address (March 1865), Washington, D.C.; Lincoln was alluding to Jesus' words in in Matthew 7:1 "Judge not, that ye be not judged." (KJV).

• I have always thought that all men should be free; but if any should be slaves, it should be first those who desire it for themselves, and secondly, those who desire it for others. When I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
  • Abraham Lincoln, in an address to an Indiana Regiment passing through Washington (17 March 1865); The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln Volume VIII.

• As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.
  • Abraham Lincoln, in notes for a speech from a fragment presented by to the Chicago Veterans Druggist's Association in 1906 by Judge James B. Bradwell, who claimed to have received it from Mary Todd Lincoln. Collected Works, 2:532.

• In reference to you, colored people, let me say God has made you free. Although you have been deprived of your God-given rights by your so-called 'masters', you are now as free as I am, and if those that claim to be your superiors do not know that you are free, take the sword and bayonet and teach them that you are; for God created all men free, giving to each the same rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
  • Abraham Lincoln, speech to freed slaves in Richmond, Virginia (4 April 1865), as quoted in Recollected Words of Abraham Lincoln (1996), by Don Edward Fehrenbacher and Virginia Fehrenbacher, editor, p. 257.

• Viewing the success awarded to opening up the new country as a development of Divine Providence in relation to the African family, the mind naturally turns to the probable influence it may have on negro slavery, and more especially on the practice of it by a large portion of our own race... We claim a right to speak about this evil, and also to act in reference to its removal, the more especially because we are of one blood. It is on the Anglo-American race that the hopes of the world for liberty and progress rest. Now it is very grievous to find one portion of this race practicing the gigantic evil, and the other aiding, by increased demands for the produce of slave labor, in perpetuating the enormous wrong.
  • David Livingstone, Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa (1857).

• If there breathe on earth a slave,
  Are ye truly free and brave?
  If ye do not feel the chain,
  When it works a brother's pain,
  Are ye not base slaves indeed,
  Slaves unworthy to be freed?
  • James Russell Lowell, "Stanzas on Freedom" (1843).

• They are slaves who fear to speak
  For the fallen and the weak;
  They are slaves who will not choose
  Hatred, scoffing, and abuse,
  Rather than in silence shrink
  From the truth they needs must think;
  They are slaves who dare not be
  In the right with two or three.
  • James Russell Lowell, "Stanzas on Freedom" (1843).

• Man is not free to watch impassively the enslavement and dishonor of men, nor their struggles for liberty and honor.
  • José Martí, My Race (1893), "Mi Raza", first published in Patria (16 April 1893) Full translation online

• The tragedy of Korea is further heightened by the fact that its military action is confined to its territorial limits. It condemns that nation, which it is our purpose to save, to suffer the devastating impact of full naval and air bombardment while the enemy's sanctuaries are fully protected from such attack and devastation. Of the nations of the world, Korea alone, up to now, is the sole one which has risked its all against communism. The magnificence of the courage and fortitude of the Korean people defies description. They have chosen to risk death rather than slavery. Their last words to me were: 'Don't scuttle the Pacific!'
  • Douglas MacArthur, as quoted in farewell address to a Joint Session of Congress (19 April 1951).
• When I became conscious of what my situation was, I thought of the best way to escape without being caught. I knew that if I didn't find that way, I could be killed.
  • A former slave named Mattala, in "I was born a slave" - Matalla tells his story, Reuters (21 March 2007)

• Who really is the faithful and discreet slave whom his master appointed over his domestics, to give them their food at the proper time? Happy is that slave if his master on coming finds him doing so!
  • Matthew 24:45,46
  • The above phrase is quoted in isolation, which make it likely to be misunderstood. In context, the whole topic speaks about the Second Coming of Christ from Matthew 24:36 to Matthew 24:46:
    • Compare the following Variant translation of the bible passage The Day and Hour Unknown in the NIV bible version: "But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left. Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him. “Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom the master has put in charge of the servants in his household to give them their food at the proper time? It will be good for that servant whose master finds him doing so when he returns."
    • As it is evident in the theological context, Jesus was not talking about the historical slavery. He made a comparison in which he is the master and his followers are the spiritual servants.

• Execrable son! so to aspire
  Above his brethren, to himself assuming
  Authority usurp'd, 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.
  • John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book XII, line 64.

• In his discussion on slavery Aristotle said that when the shuttle wove by itself and the plectrum played by itself chief workmen would not need helpers nor masters slaves. At the time he wrote, he believed that he was establishing the eternal validity of slavery; but for us today he was in reality justifying the existence of the machine. Work, it is true, is the constant form of man's interaction with his environment, if by work one means the sum total of exertions necessary to maintain life; and the lack of work usually means an impairment of function and a breakdown in organic relationship that leads to substitute forms of work, such as invalidism and neurosis. But work in the form of unwilling drudgery or of that sedentary routine which... the Athenians so properly despised—work in these forms is the true province of machines. Instead of reducing human beings to work-mechanisms, we can now transfer the main part of burden to automatic machines. This potentially... is perhaps the largest justification of the mechanical developments of the last thousand years.
  • Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization (1934)

• If the trade is at present carried on to the same extent and nearly in the same manner, while we are delaying from year to year to put a stop to our part in it, the blood of many thousands of our helpless, much injured fellow creatures is crying against us. The pitiable state of the survivors who are torn from their relatives, connections, and their native land must be taken into account. I fear the African trade is a national sin, for the enormities which accompany it are now generally known; and though, perhaps, the greater part of the nation would be pleased if it were suppressed, yet, as it does not immediately affect their own interest, they are passive. {...] Can we wonder that the calamities of the present war begin to be felt at home, when we ourselves wilfully and deliberately inflict much greater calamities upon the native Africans, who never offended us?. "Woe unto thee that spoilest, and thou wast not spoiled when thou shalt cease to spoil, thou shalt be spoiled.
  • John Newton (1797), former slave-trader who later became an abolitionist. . Alluding to the biblical verse in Isaiah 33:1. As quoted in The Works of the Rev. John Newton... to which are Prefixed Memoirs of His Life (1839), Vol. 2, U. Hunt., page 438

• I should be inexcusable, considering the share I have formerly had in that unhappy business, if, upon this occasion, I should omit to mention the African slave-trade. I do not rank this amongst our national sins, because I hope, and believe, a very great majority of the nation earnestly long for its suppression. But, hitherto, petty and partial interest prevail against the voice of justice, humanity and truth. This enormity, however, is not sufficiently laid to heart. If you are justly shocked by what you hear of the cruelties practised in France, you would, perhaps, be shocked much more, if you could fully conceive of the evils and miseries inseparable from this traffic, which I apprehend, not from hearsay, but from my own observation, are equal in atrocity, and, perhaps superior in number, in the course of a single year, to any or all the worst actions which have been known in France since the commencement of their revolution. There is a cry of blood against us; a cry accumulated by the accession of fresh victims, of thousands, of scores of thousands, I had almost said of hundreds of thousands, from year to year.
  • John Newton (1797), former slave-trader who later became an abolitionist. As quoted in The Works of the Rev. John Newton... to which are Prefixed Memoirs of His Life (1839), Vol. 2, U. Hunt, pages 429-230.

• It ought to concern every person, because it is a debasement of our common humanity. It ought to concern every community, because it tears at our social fabric. It ought to concern every business, because it distorts markets. It ought to concern every nation, because it endangers public health and fuels violence and organized crime. I’m talking about the injustice, the outrage, of human trafficking, which must be called by its true name -- modern slavery.
  • Barack Obama, Remarks by the President to the Clinton Global Initiative at Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers in New York City, New York on September 25, 2012

• When a man, desperate for work, finds himself in a factory or on a fishing boat or in a field, working, toiling, for little or no pay, and beaten if he tries to escape -- that is slavery. When a woman is locked in a sweatshop, or trapped in a home as a domestic servant, alone and abused and incapable of leaving -- that’s slavery. When a little boy is kidnapped, turned into a child soldier, forced to kill or be killed -- that’s slavery. When a little girl is sold by her impoverished family -- girls my daughters’ age -- runs away from home, or is lured by the false promises of a better life, and then imprisoned in a brothel and tortured if she resists -- that’s slavery. It is barbaric, and it is evil, and it has no place in a civilized world.
  • Barack Obama, Remarks by the President to the Clinton Global Initiative at Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers in New York City, New York on September 25, 2012

• The life of an animal is misery and slavery: that is the plain truth.
  • George Orwell, Animal Farm.

• It has always appeared to me that the Democratic Party was incensed and bitter over the fact that slavery was abolished in America. So, since the Democrats could no longer keep blacks in literal chains as slaves, they invented virtual chains to enslave black Americans. Welfare and the ghetto; the liberal plantation.
  • Brent Parrish, as quoted in "Why Democrats Are Still the Party of Slavery" (28 June 2015), by B. Parrish, The Right Planet.

• When an individual becomes utterly dependent on another person or group to provide all of their emotional, spiritual and physical needs, that individual has given away all of their power. They are allowing another person or persons the ability to pull the proverbial rug out from under them at any given moment. It is a form of slavery, plain and simple. Furthermore, the dependent individual is held down, unable to rise above the level of the person or persons to which they have become dependent upon. I call that evil.
  • Brent Parrish, as quoted in "Why Democrats Are Still the Party of Slavery" (28 June 2015), by B. Parrish, The Right Planet.

• If Americans should now turn back, submit again to slavery, it would be a betrayal so base the human race might better perish.
  • Isabel Paterson, The God of the Machine (1943), p. 292.

• Slavery isn't a uniquely American sin, but rather one of mankind throughout the course of history.
  • Catherine M. Pavlich, as quoted in "Katie Pavlich: America Is Not Racist" (29 June 2015), by C.M. Pavlich, The Hill, News Communications, Inc.

• If the Negroes, numbering one-eighth of the population of these United States, would only cast their votes in the interest of the Democratic Party, all open measures against them would be immediately suspended and their rights as American citizens recognized. But as to the real results of such a state of affairs, and speaking in behalf of those with whom I am conversant, I can only say that we love freedom more, vastly more, than slavery; consequently we hope to keep clear of the Democrats! I say to the entire membership of the Democratic Party, that upon your hands rests the blood of the loyal men of the south. Disclaim it as you will; the stain is there to prove your criminality before God and the world in the day of retribution.
  • Joseph Hayne Rainey, as quoted in speech (1871).

• I shall choose friends among men, but neither slaves nor masters. And I shall choose only such as please me, and them I shall love and respect, but neither command nor obey. And we shall join our hands when we wish, or walk alone when we so desire.
  • Ayn Rand, Anthem (1937).

• While the rest of the western world followed an historic trajectory dedicated to abolishing slavery and bringing an expanded meaning to the concepts of human rights and participatory democracy, the south marched off in an opposite direction. The Confederacy was a nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are not created equal, and that the government's job is to preserve and ensure that inequality.
  • Gordon Rhea, as quoted in “Why Non-Slaveholding Southeners Fought” (25 January 2011), Civil War Trust.

• Although they may be poor, not a man shall be a slave.
  • George Frederick Root, "Battle Cry of Freedom" (1862).

• Base is the slave that pays.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry V (c. 1599), Act II, scene 1, line 100.

• You have among you many a purchas'd slave,
  Which, like your asses and your dogs and mules,
  You use in abject and in slavish parts,
  Because you bought them.
  • William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice (late 1590s), Act IV, scene 1, line 90.

• Vis tu cogitare istum, quem servum tuum vocas, ex isdem seminibus ortum eodem frui caelo, aeque spirare, aeque vivere, aeque mori!
  • Kindly remember that he whom you call your slave sprang from the same stock, is smiled upon by the same skies, and on equal terms with yourself breathes, lives, and dies.
  • Seneca the Younger, Moral letters to Lucilius, Letter 47: On master and slave, 10, circa 65 AD

• If slavery, barbarism and desolation are to be called peace, men can have no worse misfortune. No doubt there are usually more and sharper quarrels between parents and children, than between masters and slaves; yet it advances not the art of household management to change a father's right into a right of property, and count children but as slaves. Slavery, then, and not peace, is furthered by handing, over the whole authority to one man.
  • Baruch Spinoza, in Political Treatise (1677), Tractatus Politicus as translated by A. H. Gosset (1883), Ch. 6, On Monarchy - Alternate site (this is an unfinished work, left incomplete by Spinoza's death).

• It remains to point out the advantage of a knowledge of this doctrine as bearing on conduct, and this may be easily gathered from what has been said. The doctrine is good, (1) Inasmuch as it teaches us solely according to the decree of God, and to be partakers of the Divine nature, and so much the more, as we perform more perfect actions and more and more understand God. Such a doctrine not only completely tranquilizes our spirit, but also shows us where our highest happiness or blessedness is, namely, solely in the knowledge of God, whereby we are led to act only as love and piety shall bid us. We may thus clearly understand, how far astray from a true estimate of virtue are those who expect to be decorated by God with high rewards for their virtue, and their best actions, as for having endured the direct slavery; as if virtue and the service of God were not in itself happiness and perfect freedom. (2) Inasmuch as it teaches us, how we ought to conduct ourselves with respect to the gifts of fortune, or matters which are not in our power, and do not follow from our nature. For it shows us that we should await and endure fortune's smiles or frowns with an equal mind, seeing that all things follow from the eternal decree of God by the same necessity... (3) This doctrine raises social life, inasmuch as it teaches us to hate no man, neither to despise, to deride, to envy, or to be angry with any. Further, as it tells us that each should be content with his own, and helpful to his neighbor, not from any womanish pity, favor, or superstition, but solely from the guide of reason, according as the time and occasion demand... (4) Lastly, this doctrine confers no small advantage on the commonwealth; for it teaches how citizens should be governed and lead, not so as to become slaves, but so that they may freely do whatsoever things are best.
  • Baruch Spinoza, Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (Ethics Geometrically Demonstrated) (published in 1677), Part II: On the Nature and Origin of the Mind, Prop. 49: Note, Full text online

• I can never acknowledge the right of slavery. I will bow down to no deity however worshipped by professing Christians — however dignified by the name of the Goddess of Liberty, whose footstool is the crushed necks of the groaning millions, and who rejoices in the resoundings of the tyrant's lash, and the cries of his tortured victims.
  • Thaddeus Stevens, letter (4 May 1838), quoted in Shapers of the Great Debate on the Civil War : A Biographical Dictionary (2005) by Dan Monroe and Bruce Tap, p. 255

• There can be no fanatics in the cause of genuine liberty. Fanaticism is excessive zeal. There may be, and have been fanatics in false religion; in the bloody religions of the heathen. There are fanatics in superstition. But there can be no fanatic, however warm their zeal, in the true religion, even although you sell your goods and bestow your money on the poor, and go on and follow your Master. There may, and every hour shows around me, fanatics in the cause of false liberty – that infamous liberty which justifies human bondage, that liberty whose 'corner-stone is slavery'. But there can be no fanaticism however high the enthusiasm, in the cause of rational, universal liberty – the liberty of the Declaration of Independence.
  • Thaddeus Stevens, "The California Question" (10 June 1850), as quoted in The Selected Works of Thaddeus Stevens.

• The accursed system of slavery will fall, as did Satan from Heaven.
  • Austin Steward, Colored American (2 June 1838).

• Slavery is in itself an arrogant denial of human rights, and by no human reason can the power to establish such a wrong be placed among the attributes of any just sovereignty.
  • Charles Sumner in his The Crime Against Kansas speech (May 19-20, 1856).

• I am a poor, ignorant man . . . but I have heard of the Declaration of Independence, and have read the Bible. The Declaration says all men are created equal, and the Bible says God has made us all of one blood. I think ... we are entitled to good treatment, that it is wrong to hold men in slavery.
  • Arthur Tappan, an elderly black man who spoke at the New York City Anti-Slavery Society in 1833. As quoted by Stern, Joseph (1941), Science & Society, Vol 5, p. 168. See also Ottley, Roi (1948), Inside Black America, p. 14.
  • The quotation "God has made us all of one blood." is a reference to the New Testament Book Acts of the Apostles where Paul of Tarsus says about God: "And [he] hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring." (Acts, 17:26-28 King James Version) The one blood is Adam and Eve, for "God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them." (Genesis, 1-27 New International Version)
  • According to the New International Version the poets in this bible passage "From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’" (Acts, 17:26-28 New International Version) are the the Cretan philosopher Epimenides and the Cilician Stoic philosopher Aratus.

• Who do you think made your cloths?
• Solana, the Ood aren't born like this. They can't be. A species born to serve could never evolve in the first place. What does the company do to make them obey?
  • David Tennant as The Doctor, Planet of the Ood written by Keith Temple

• As soon as men live entirely in accord with the law of love natural to their hearts and now revealed to them, which excludes all resistance by violence, and therefore hold aloof from all participation in violence — as soon as this happens, not only will hundreds be unable to enslave millions, but not even millions will be able to enslave a single individual.
  • Leo Tolstoy, in A Letter to a Hindu (1908)

• I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?
  • Ain't I a Woman? (1851), by Sojourner Truth (ca.1797-1883), a woman born into slavery who later became a prominent abolitionist.

• Of all forms of slavery there is none that is so harmful and degrading as that form of slavery which tempts one human being to hate another by reason of his race or color. One man cannot hold another man down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch with him.
  • Booker T. Washington, An Address on Abraham Lincoln before the Republican Club of New York City (12 February 1909)

• In any country, regardless of what its laws say, wherever people act upon the idea that the disadvantage of one man is the good of another, there slavery exists. Wherever, in any country the whole people feel that the happiness of all is dependent upon the happiness of the weakest, there freedom exists.
  • Booker T. Washington, An Address on Abraham Lincoln before the Republican Club of New York City (12 February 1909)

• Does any one suppose a slave trade would help their civilization? Is it not plain that she must suffer from it; that civilization must be checked; that her barbarous manners must be made more barbarous; and that the happiness of her millions of inhabitants must be prejudiced with her intercourse with Britain? Does not every one see that a slave trade carried on around her coasts must carry violence and desolation to her very center?
  • William Wilberforce, main leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade in England.

• The true way to virtue is by withdrawing from temptation; let us then withdraw from these wretched Africans those temptations to fraud, violence, cruelty, and injustice, which the slave trade furnishes. Wherever the sun shines, let us go round the world with him, diffusing our benevolence; but let us not traffic, only that we may set kings against their subjects, subjects against their kings, sowing discord in every village, fear and terror in every family, setting millions of our fellow creatures a-hunting each other for slaves, creating fairs and markets for human flesh through one whole continent of the world, and, under the name of policy, concealing from ourselves all the baseness and iniquity of such a traffic
  • William Wilberforce, "On the Horrors of the Slave Trade", speech delivered in the House of Commons (12 May 1789).

• God Almighty has set before me two great objects, the suppression of the slave trade and the reformation of manners (morality).
  • William Wilberforce.

• For the prime design of society is the extension of the operation of law, and the equal treatment and protection of the citizens. Slavery, therefore, being the negation of law, cannot arise from law, or be compatible with it. As far as slavery prevails in any community, so far must that community be defective in answering the purposes of society. And this we affirm to be in the highest degree the case of our colonies. Slavery, indeed, in the manner wherein it is found there, is an unnatural state of opression on the one side, and of suffering on the other; and needs only to be laid open or exposed in its native colours, to command the abhorrence and opposition of every man of feeling and sentiment.
  • Rev. James Ramsay, Anglican priest and leading abolitionist. An Essay on the Treatment and Conversion of African Slaves in the British Sugar Colonies (1784), p. 16.

• We used to own our slaves; now we just rent them.
  • Anonymous statement attributed by Edward R. Murrow to an unnamed farmer in "Harvest of Shame", CBS Reports (24 November 1960).

Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989)

• But this momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror.
  • Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Holmes, April 22, 1820.—The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Paul L. Ford, vol. 10, p. 157 (1899). Jefferson refers to the Missouri question, whether to admit Missouri as a slave state but prohibit slavery in the rest of the Louisiana Purchase. Holmes was a representative from Massachusetts from 1817 to March 15, 1820, when he resigned to attend the Maine constitutional convention. He was elected to the Senate from Maine and served from June 13, 1820, to 1827, and 1829–1833.

• Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it. We—even we here—hold the power, and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free—honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best, hope of earth.
  • Abraham Lincoln, annual message to Congress, December 1, 1862; in Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (1953), vol. 5, p. 537.

• I do not understand that because I do not want a negro woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. My understanding is that I can just let her alone.
  • Abraham Lincoln, fourth debate with Senator Stephen A. Douglas, Charleston, Illinois, September 18, 1858; in Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (1953), vol. 3, p. 146. Lincoln used similar wording in a speech in Springfield, Illinois, June 26, 1857: "Now I protest against that counterfeit logic which concludes that, because I do not want a black woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. I need not have her for either. I can just leave her alone".—Collected Works, vol. 2, p. 405 (1953).

• Those arguments that are made, that the inferior race are to be treated with as much allowance as they are capable of enjoying; that as much is to be done for them as their condition will allow. What are these arguments? They are the arguments that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world. You will find that all the arguments in favor of kingcraft were of this class; they always bestrode the necks of the people, not that they wanted to do it, but because the people were better off for being ridden. That is their argument, and this argument of the Judge is the same old serpent that says you work and I eat, you toil and I will enjoy the fruits of it. Turn in whatever way you will—whether it comes from the mouth of a King, an excuse for enslaving the people of his country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another race, it is all the same old serpent, and I hold if that course of argumentation that is made for the purpose of convincing the public mind that we should not care about this, should be granted, it does not stop with the negro.
  • Abraham Lincoln, speech at Chicago, Illinois, July 10, 1858; in Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (1953), vol. 2, p. 500.

• Whenever [I] hear any one, arguing for slavery I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
  • President Abraham Lincoln, speech to 140th Indiana regiment, March 17, 1865; in Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (1953), vol. 8, p. 361.

• To Americans, that some desperate wretches should be willing to steal and enslave men by violence and murder for gain, is rather lamentable than strange. But that many civilized, nay, christianized people should approve, and be concerned in the savage practice, is surprising; and still persist, though it has been so often proved contrary to the light of nature, to every principle of Justice and Humanity, and even good policy, by a succession of eminent men, and several late publications.
  • Thomas Paine, as quoted in African Slavery in America (1775).

• All socialism involves slavery…. That which fundamentally distinguishes the slave is that he labours under coercion to satisfy another's desires.
  • Herbert Spencer, "The Coming Slavery", The Contemporary Review, April 1884, p. 474. This essay was reprinted in chapter 2 of his book, Man vs. the State (1884).

• 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.
  • Attributed to George Washington, John Bernard, Retrospections of America, 1797–1811, p. 91 (1887). This is from Bernard's account of a conversation he had with Washington in 1798. Reported as unverified in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989).

• In returning I read a very different book, published by an honest Quaker, on that execrable sum of all villanies, commonly called the Slave-trade.
  • John Wesley Journal (12 February 1772) after reading Some historical accounts of Guinea by Anthony Benezet

• Hurrah! Hurrah! We bring the jubilee! Hurrah! Hurrah! The flag that makes you free!
  • Henry Clay Work, as quoted in "Marching Through Georgia" (1865), by H.C. Work.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 715-16.

• Servi peregrini, ut primum Galliæ fines penetraverint eodem momento liberi sunt.
  • Foreign slaves, as soon as they come within the limits of Gaul, that moment they are free.
  • Bodinus, Book I, Chapter V.

• Lord Mansfield first established the grand doctrine that the air of England is too pure to be breathed by a slave.
  • Lord Campbell, Lives of the Chief Justices, Volume II, p. 418.

• No more slave States and no more slave territory.
  • Salmon P. Chase, Resolutions Adopted at the Free-Soil National Convention (Aug. 9, 1848).

• Cotton is King; or Slavery in the Light of Political Economy.
  • David Christy, title of book (pub. 1855), the phrase "Cotton is King" was later used by James H. Hammond in the US Senate in March, 1858, and Gov. Manning of South Carolina, in a speech at Columbia, S. C. (1858).

• It [Chinese Labour in South Africa] could not, in the opinion of His Majesty's Government, be classified as slavery in the extreme acceptance of the word without some risk of terminological inexactitude.
  • Winston Churchill in the British House of Commons (Feb. 22, 1906).

• Nimia libertas et populis et privatis in nimiam servitutem cadit.
  • Excessive liberty leads both nations and individuals into excessive slavery.
  • Cicero, De Republica, I. 44.

• Fit in dominatu servitus, in servitute dominatus.
  • He is sometimes slave who should be master; and sometimes master who should be slave.
  • Cicero, Oratio Pro Rege Deiotaro, XI.

• Corrupted freemen are the worst of slaves.
  • David Garrick, Prologue to Ed. Moore's Gamesters.

• Resolved, That the compact which exists between the North and the South is a covenant with death and an agreement with hell; involving both parties in atrocious criminality, and should be immediately annulled.
  • William Lloyd Garrison, adopted by the Mass. Anti-Slavery Society. Fanueil Hall. Jan. 27, 1843.

• The man who gives me employment, which I must have or suffer, that man is my master, let me call him what I will.
  • Henry George, Social Problems, Chapter V.

• The very mudsills of society. * * * We call them slaves. * * * But I will not characterize that class at the North with that term; but you have it. It is there, it is everywhere, it is eternal.
  • James H. Hammond, speech in the U. S. Senate. (March 1858).

• Whatever day
  Makes man a slave, takes half his worth away.
  • Homer, The Odyssey, Book XVII, line 392. Pope's translation.

• [England] a soil whose air is deemed too pure for slaves to breathe in.
  • Capel Lofft, Reports, p. 2. Margrave's Argument. (14 May 1772).

• The air of England has long been too pure for a slave, and every man is free who breathes it.
  • Lord Mansfield. Said in the case of a negro, James Somersett, carried from Africa to Jamaica and sold.

• Where bastard Freedom waves
  Her fustian flag in mockery over slaves.
  • Thomas Moore, To the Lord Viscount Forbes, written from the City of Washington.

• And ne'er shall the sons of Columbia be slaves,
  While the earth bears a plant, or the sea rolls its waves.
  • Robert Paine, Ode, Adams and Liberty (1798).

• Englishmen never will be slaves; they are free to do whatever the Government and public opinion allow them to do.
  • Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman.

• Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still,
  Slavery! said I—still thou art a bitter draught.
  • Laurence Sterne, Sentimental Journey, The Passport, The Hotel at Paris.

• By the Law of Slavery, man, created in the image of God, is divested of the human character, and declared to be a mere chattel.
  • Charles Sumner, The Anti-Slavery Enterprise, address at New York (9 May 1859).

• Where Slavery is there Liberty cannot be; and where Liberty is there Slavery cannot be.
  • Charles Sumner, Slavery and the Rebellion, speech before the New York Young Men's Republican Union (Nov. 5, 1864).

• They [the blacks] had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.
  • Roger B. Taney, The Dred Scot Case. See Howard's Rep, Volume XIX, p. 407.

• Slavery is also as ancient as war, and war as human nature.
  • Voltaire, Dictionnaire philosophique portatif ("A Philosophical Dictionary") (1764), Slaves.

• I never mean, unless some particular circumstances should compel me to do it, to possess another slave by purchase, it being among my first wishes to see some plan adopted by which slavery in this country may be abolished by law.
  • George Washington, Farewell Address.

• That execrable sum of all villanies commonly called the Slave-trade.
  • John Wesley, Journal (Feb. 12, 1792).

• A Christian! going, gone!
  Who bids for God's own image?—for his grace,
  Which that poor victim of the market-place
  Hath in her suffering won?
  • John Greenleaf Whittier, Voices of Freedom, The Christian Slave.

• Our fellow-countrymen in chains!
  Slaves—in a land of light and law!
  Slaves—crouching on the very plains
  Where rolled the storm of Freedom's war!
  • John Greenleaf Whittier, Voices of Freedom, Stanzas.

• What! mothers from their children riven!
  What! God's own image bought and sold!
  AMERICANS to market driven,
  And bartered as the brute for gold!
  • John Greenleaf Whittier, Voices of Freedom, Stanzas.

• Time-servers are the cowering slaves of slaves,
  Alone on earth, who serves the Lord is free,
  Each soul shall win the gift that it most craves;
  Seek God, my soul — God shall your portion be!
  • Judah Halevi, Time-Servers

External links

• Life after slavery, video clip about slavery in the Islamic Republic of Mauritania