quotations about slavery
Can any logical inference in favor of slavery be drawn from a flat nose, a long or a short face? Nothing better can be said in favor of a trade that is the most shocking violation of the law of nature, has a direct tendency to diminish the idea of the inestimable value of liberty, and makes every dealer in it a tyrant, from the director of an African company to the petty chapman in needles and pins on the unhappy coast. It is a clear truth that those who every day barter away other men's liberty will soon care little for their own.
JAMES OTIS
"The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved", 1764
Don't open your eyes you won't like what you see
The blind have been blessed with security
Don't open your eyes take it from me
I have found
You can find
Happiness in slavery
NINE INCH NAILS
"Happiness in Slavery"
This declared indifference, but, as I must think, covert, real zeal, for the spread of slavery, I cannot 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 good men among ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty, criticizing the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no right principle of action but self-interest.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
speech, October 16, 1854
Every man having been born free and master of himself, no one else may under any pretext whatever subject him without his consent. To assert that the son of a slave is born a slave is to assert that he is not born a man.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
The Social Contract, Or Principles of Political Right
It eats your soul, like tears you fall, my slave
You steal, you heed the call, my slave
The keys, the keys are gone, my slave
You keep me beating on
YEAH YEAH YEAHS
"Slave"
Where an average slave in 1850 would have cost the equivalent of $40,000 in modern money, today's slave can be bought for a few hundred dollars. This cheapness makes the modern slave easily affordable, but it also makes him or her a disposable commodity. For the slaveholder it's often cheaper to let a slave die than it is to buy medicine to keep the slave alive. There is no form of slavery, past or present, that isn't horrific; however, today's slavery is one of the most diabolical strains to emerge in the thousands of years in which humans have been enslaving their fellows.
KEVIN BALES & RON SOODALTER
The Slave Next Door
No slavery can be abolished without a double emancipation, and the master will benefit by freedom more than the freed-man.
THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
Aphorisms and Reflections
Ye men of sense and virtue -- Ye advocates for American liberty, rouse up and espouse the cause of humanity and general liberty. Bear a testimony against a vice which degrades human nature, and dissolves that universal tie of benevolence which should connect all the children of men together in one great family -- The plant of liberty is of so tender a nature, that it cannot thrive long in the neighbourhood of slavery.
BENJAMIN RUSH
"On Slavekeeping", 1773
Slavery is so vile and miserable an Estate of Man, and so directly opposite to the generous Temper and Courage of our Nation; that 'tis hardly to be conceived, that an Englishman, much less a Gentleman, should plead for't.
JOHN LOCKE
Second Treatise of Government
It would seem that man was born a slave, and that slavery is his natural condition. At the same time nothing on earth can stop man from feeling himself born for liberty. Never, whatever may happen, can he accept servitude; for he is a thinking creature.
SIMONE WEIL
Oppression and Liberty
It is a debt we owe to the purity of our religion to show that it is at variance with that law which warrants slavery.
PATRICK HENRY
letter to Robert Pleasants, January 18, 1773
I hate slavery, though the chains be of gold.
ELEONORA FONSECA PIMENTEL
attributed, Day's Collacon
Slavery is an Hydra sin, and includes in it every violation of the precepts of the Law and the Gospel.
BENJAMIN RUSH
"On Slavekeeping", 1773
I have often been asked how I felt when first I found myself on free soil. There is scarcely anything in my experience about which I could not give a more satisfactory answer. A new world had opened upon me. If life is more than breath and the "quick round of blood," I lived more in that one day than in a year of my slave life. It was a time of joyous excitement which words can but tamely describe. In a letter written to a friend soon after reaching New York, I said: "I felt as one might feel upon escape from a den of hungry lions."
FREDERICK DOUGLASS
"My Escape from Slavery", The Century Illustrated Magazine, November 1881
He that is brought up a slave, will be a tyrant when he has the power.
FREDERICK MARRYATT
Frank Mildmay; or, The Naval Officer
I envy neither the heart nor the head of that man who rises here to defend slavery from principle.
JOHN RANDOLPH
attributed, Day's Collacon
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 of a speech from 1854, Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln
I believe that the Supreme Court and the advocates of that decision may search in vain for the place in the Constitution where the right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
debate with Stephen Douglas, October 7, 1858
If we would trace our descents, we should find all slaves to come from princes and all princes from slaves: But fortune has turned all things topsy-turvy, in a long story of revolutions.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
You cannot reform slavery. Slavery is a crime against humanity. You don't reform it. So if you get up here and tell us to reform slavery, you're confused brother. You're confused sister. Because you can't fix that. What do you do when you're faced with a crime against humanity that has been legalized? (Abolish it!) Say it one more time. (Abolish it!) That's what I'm talking about.
MAX PARTHAS
speech at the Millions For Prisoners Human Rights March in Washington, D.C., August 19, 2017