quotations about slavery
Let every voice be thunder, let every heart beat strong
Until all tyrants perish our work shall not be done
Let not our memories fail us the lost year shall be found
Let slavery's chains be broken the whole wide world around.
PETER, PAUL & MARY
"Because All Men Are Brothers"
Once slavery in America was not seen as radical. It became, instead, a revolutionary idea that slaves should be freed. When we have lived under a pernicious power long enough, no matter how oppressive, we grow so accustomed to the yoke that its removal seems frightening, even wrong.
GERRY L. SPENCE
From Freedom to Slavery
Slavery is a continual and permanent violation of human rights.
DANIEL WEBSTER
letter to Rev. Mr. Furness, February 15, 1850
Slavery is no more sinful, by the Christian code, than it is sinful to wear a whole coat, while another is in tatters, to eat a better meal than a neighbor, or otherwise to enjoy ease and plenty, while our fellow creatures are suffering and in want.
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER
The American Democrat
The turpitude, the inhumanity, the cruelty, and the infamy of the African commerce in slaves have been so impressively represented to the public by the highest powers of eloquence that nothing that I can say would increase the just odium in which it is and ought to be held. Every measure of prudence, therefore, ought to be assumed for the eventual total extirpation of slavery from the United States.
JOHN ADAMS
letter to T. Robert J. Evans, June 8, 1819
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
At first, man was enslaved by the gods. But he broke their chains. Then he was enslaved by the kings. But he broke their chains. He was enslaved by his birth, by his kin, by his race. But he broke their chains. He declared to all his brothers that a man has rights which neither god nor king nor other men can take away from him, no matter what their number, for his is the right of man, and there is no right on earth above this right. And he stood on the threshold of freedom for which the blood of the centuries behind him had been spilled.
AYN RAND
Anthem
But there's no such thing as free. There are only different and more horrible ways to be enslaved.
LAUREN DESTEFANO
Fever
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
GEORGE ORWELL
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Willingly no one chooses the yoke of slavery.
AESCHYLUS
Agamemnon
Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.... The subjection of individuals will increase amongst democratic nations, not only in the same proportion as their equality, but in the same proportion as their ignorance.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
Democracy in America
I thank God, I shall never again visit a slave-country. To this day, if I hear a distant scream, it recalls with painful vividness my feelings, when passing a house near Pernambuco, I heard the most pitiable moans, and could not but suspect that some poor slave was being tortured, yet knew that I was as powerless as a child even to remonstrate. I suspected that these moans were from a tortured slave, for I was told that this was the case in another instance. Near Rio de Janeiro I lived opposite to an old lady, who kept screws to crush the fingers of her female slaves. I have staid in a house where a young household mulatto, daily and hourly, was reviled, beaten, and persecuted enough to break the spirit of the lowest animal. I have seen a little boy, six or seven years old, struck thrice with a horse-whip (before I could interfere) on his naked head, for having handed me a glass of water not quite clean; I saw his father tremble at a mere glance from his master's eye. ... And these deeds are done and palliated by men, who profess to love their neighbours as themselves, who believe in God, and pray that his Will be done on earth! It makes one's blood boil, yet heart tremble, to think that we Englishmen and our American descendants, with their boastful cry of liberty, have been and are so guilty.
CHARLES DARWIN
The Voyage of the Beagle
If there is a State, there must be domination of one class by another and, as a result, slavery; the State without slavery is unthinkable -- and this is why we are the enemies of the State.
MIKHAIL BAKUNIN
"Statism and Anarchy"
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
Speech at the Second Virginia Convention at St. John's Church in Richmond, Virginia, March 23, 1775
Servants to mother machine
Nursed by video screens
Paradise of insanity
Born into a grave of
Mental slavery
KREATOR
"Mental Slavery"
Slave trade still exists, it's a legacy of the past
Punishment's long overdue
To fight the fears it casts
Hard-boiled criminals,
they're rotten to the core
Machinery in motion
so long as money is the law
RUNNING WILD
"Slavery"
They keep on talking, they're oh so proud
They keep us walking, they scream so loud
They own the venue, they own he crowd
Hey, yeah, slavery
RICHIE HAVENS
"Fates"
X is not my real name, but if you study history you'll find why no black man in the western hemisphere knows his real name. Some of his ancestors kidnapped our ancestors from Africa, and took us into the western hemisphere and sold us there. And our names were stripped from us and so today we don't know who we really are. I am one of those who admit it and so I just put X up there to keep from wearing his name.
MALCOLM X
Oxford Union Debate, December 3, 1964
Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still, Slavery! 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
Jaws of greed shine of green salivate
Force feed until gums bleed in slavery
Bottled trapped lifeless meat
Are you the leasher or the one being leashed?
HIS HERO IS GONE
"Leash"