Slavery

Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy.
—Frederick Douglass

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.

Quotes

A

• One Cartwright brought a Slave from Russia, and would scourge him, for which he was questioned: and it was resolved, That England was too pure an Air for Slaves to breathe in.
  • Anonymous (17 November 1568 – 16 November 1569; "In the 11th of Elizabeth"), in John Rushworth, Historical Collections (1680–1722), vol. 2, p. 468

• If all men are born free, how is it that all women are born slaves?
  • Mary Astell, Some Reflections upon Marriage, 3rd ed. (1706), preface

• Slavery they can have anywhere. It is a weed that grows in every soil.
  • Edmund Burke, Speech "On Conciliation with America" (22 March 1775)

C

• 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; reported in J. K. Hoyt and Anna L. Ward (eds.) The Cyclopaedia of Practical Quotations, 4th ed. (1882), p. 564

• 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; reported in Hoyt and Ward (1882), p. 555

• The worker is the slave of capitalist society, the female worker is the slave of that slave.
  • James Connolly, The Re-Conquest of Ireland (1915), p. 38

• Freedom has a thousand charms to show,
  That slaves, howe’er contented, never know.
  • William Cowper, Table Talk (1782)

D

• Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy.
  • Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845)

• Either be wholly slaves or wholly free.
  • John Dryden, The Hind and the Panther (1687), pt. 2

G

• Corrupted freemen are the worst of slaves.
  • David Garrick, Prologue to Edward Moore's The Gamesters
  • The Dramatic Works of David Garrick, vol. 3 (1768)

• That state is a state of Slavery in which a man does what he likes to do in his spare time and in his working time that which is required of him.
  • Eric Gill, "Slavery and Freedom", Art-nonsense and Other Essays (1929)

H

• Jove fix'd it certain, that whatever day
  Makes man a slave, takes half his worth away.
  • Homer, Odyssey, bk. 17, l. 392. Pope's translation (1725)

L

• 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", Miscellaneous Poems (1843)

M

• Where bastard Freedom waves
  Her fustian flag in mockery over slaves.
  • Thomas Moore, "To the Lord Viscount Forbes, from the City of Washington", in Works, vol. 2 (Paris: A. and W. Galignani, 1823), p. 155

N

• Herren-Moral und Sklaven-Moral. [Master-morality and slave-morality.]
  • Friedrich Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse [Beyond Good and Evil] (1886), ch. 9, no. 260

O

• The life of an animal is misery and slavery: that is the plain truth.
  • George Orwell, Animal Farm (1945)

S

• I thought ye would never have given out these arms till you had recovered your ancient freedom; but you are all recreants and dastards, and delight to live in slavery to the nobility.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2 (1594), act 4, sc. 8 (Cade)

• Englishmen never will be slaves: they are free to do whatever the Government and public opinion allow them to do.
  • George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman (1903), act 3

• Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still, Slavery! said I,—still thou art a bitter draught! and though thousands in all ages have been made to drink of thee, thou art no less bitter on that account.
  • Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (1768), "The Passport. The Hotel at Paris"

• Torture was necessary to maintain slavery. It was integral to slavery. You cannot have slavery without some torture or the threat of torture; and you cannot have torture without slavery. You cannot imprison a free man for ever unless you have broken him; and you can only forcibly break a man's soul by torturing it out of him. Slavery dehumanizes; torture dehumanizes in exactly the same way. The torture of human beings who have no freedom and no recourse to the courts is slavery.
  • Andrew Sullivan, "Slavery and Torture", The Daily Dish (23 February 2007)

• 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), in C. Edwards Lester (ed.) Life and Public Services of Charles Sumner (1874), p. xxvii [1]

• 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 (5 November 1864), published as Slavery and the Rebellion: One and Inseparable (Boston: Wright & Potter, 1864), p. 10

T

• Rule, Britannia, rule the waves;
  Britons never will be slaves.
  • James Thomson, Alfred: A Masque (1740), act 2, closing scene

V

• Slavery is also as ancient as war, and war as human nature.
  • Voltaire, Dictionnaire philosophique portatif (1764); translated as A Philosophical Dictionary, vol. 2 (Boston: J. P. Mendum, 1852), p. 307

W

• 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, "The Christian Slave", Voices of Freedom (1846)

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations (1922), pp. 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

• 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)

• 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)

• 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

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

See also

• History of slavery
• Abolitionism
• Freedom
• Sexual slavery
• Wage slavery